Gladstone Vineyard Estate Pinot Noir 2019

Red, purple hue. The nose has fragrant characters of blackberry and dark cherry with floral undertones. Beautifully balanced by savoury oak notes, and sage characters. The palate is refined and tight, with real texture. Fruits form early but the wine is carried by a lovely savoury tone and whole bunch structure and tannins.

The Wairarapa wine region, of which Gladstone is part of, is famous for its savoury and well structured Pinot Noirs that develop and age extremely well. Some of the environmental conditions for this would be seen as a problem in other regions but the Wairarapa winegrowers embrace them as they are what makes Wairarapa wines consistently great. The biggest influence from the Wairarapa we have is the wind - the prevailing wind is from the North West and can get close to gale force regularly, especially during spring and early summer. This wind during budburst and flowering naturally keep crop levels low, which maintain an intensity of flavour and texture with minimal fruit thinning required.

Other environmental conditions that make this region great are the warm and dry summers but with a large diurnal temperature variation with hot dry days but cool nights, these natural temperature rhythms stabilise colour and balanced acidity whilst allowing for long ripening of flavours in balance with sugar development in the berry. Also, due to the conditions at flowering, the berry size tends to be on the smaller size, which results in better skin to juice ratio resulting in better more intense and well-structured wines. Where the Wairarapa Pinots get their trademark savoury complexity is down to a mixture of optimal ripening conditions, soil profiles throughout the region and clonal makeup of the Pinot Noir vines throughout the region.

The fruit was de-stemmed into 2-tonne fermentation tanks with about 70% of the fruit left as whole berries. As far as possible, all clones were vinied separately to allow each clone's unique characteristics to express themselves. We applied a cold soak period of 3–5 days followed by spontaneously started ferments. All batches received a post-soak of between 2–3 weeks with plunging done by hand to ensure a soft extraction of tannins. We then pressed o the batches and matured them in French oak barrels (15% new) for 10 months, each with its own balanced oak regime of barrel age and choice of coopers