Luna Estate Pinot Gris 2020

Delicately luscious Pinot Gris with ripe pear, stewed apple, clove-spice and floral, honeysuckle flavours. An initial hint of sweetness is balanced by gentle acidity, which gives a drying finish.

From the start of the 2019/2020 growing season things looked promising! Great, even bud burst with only a few relatively minor frost events. We went into this critical part of the season in the best shape yet in terms of our organic regime, with full undervine cultivation completed along with extensive spring inter-row cropping to ensure the vines had the best possible start. Conditions through spring were relatively normal; plenty of wind, some rain but not too much! With a classic Martinborough North West/South West flow. Flowering was very successful and a good sized crop was on the cards! The ripening season was long and dry but not overly hot. If one had to make any complaint at all it may have been that it was perhaps a little too dry! As we practice dry farming there was definitely signs of water stress in the canopy across some of the blocks. Welcome rain arrived just after the start of harvest but in the main conditions for picking were excellent and we had the rare pleasure of picking exactly when we wanted too! I feel strongly that 2020 will go down in the books as a great vintage for Martinborough.

Grown over three different blocks at our Blue Rock Vineyard. The most mature block, part of the original vines planted in 1986, tends to ripen earlier and has much smaller berries and cluster sizes, plus the skins tend to have increased levels of flavour and phenolics. This block was destemmed and allowed 24 hours in contact with the skins before gentle pressing and fermentation in seasoned oak barrels. The remaining blocks were harvested together and whole bunch pressed to stainless steel for a long cool ferment. Following a period of lees contact both batches are blended together for a light filtration prior to a spring bottling.