Whilst wines stored in your cellar need constant, if not coolish temperatures, it’s an entirely different rule for winemakers applying their viticultural skills to the developing fruit in the vineyard. Around the world, growing regions with the greatest variation in daily and seasonal temperatures tend to produce the best fruit for winemaking purposes and there’s…
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Chardonnay may still be the world’s biggest selling white wine varietal, but at least in the United States, the star of Pinot Gris is well and truly on the rise – so much so that it’s now comfortably the second biggest selling white wine in that country. Amongst Australian wine consumers the style lags well…
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The Central Otago region in New Zealand’s South Island may be world-renowned for its sensational Pinot Noir, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice to overlook their Pinot Gris and Rieslings next time you are scouring the shelves for a suitable white. With only about 86 hectares of Riesling vines in the Central Otago region,…
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When a light weight red is the order of the day, it’s hard to go past a youthful Pinot Noir. But as any winemaker will tell you, being a low yielding grape and troublesome in the vineyard, it’s a style which is notoriously expensive when you are looking for a wine of reasonable quality. And…
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I’ve often said that good Pinot isn’t cheap and that cheap Pinot isn’t good, but having recently tried the Nanny Goat Vineyard Pinot Noir 2012, I might have to modify my mantra! At only $25 a bottle, I wasn’t expecting anything above average, but the Nanny Goat certainly delivers well above its very reasonable price…
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Pinot Noir is undoubtedly one of the world’s most versatile food wines and outside of Burgundy in France, the Central Otago region in New Zealand’s South Island is probably the world’s premier Pinot producing region. The hallmarks of a good Central Otago Pinot include a savoury nose, sweet cherried fruit and a smooth smoky finish…
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It wasn’t all that long ago that organically and biodynamically produced wines were often regarded as somehow inferior to their chemically supported cousins, but such is the quality of modern farming practices that the inference that “biodynamics” means “B-Grade”, seems lost forever. An emerging example of the quality of organic viticultural practices is the Rock…
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Buying Pinot Noir can be a tricky business; not just because of the wide range of wines available or the diverse regions that they hail from, but because the price point can increase exponentially as the quality improves. Finding value is truly a balancing exercise between price point and quality. Pinot is a difficult grape…
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The fastest growing wine region in New Zealand is the Waipara Valley – situated only about 40 mins north of Christchurch and boasting about 1,200 hectares of vineyards. The climate and geography are ideally suited to fruiting vines, and there is no more obvious beneficiary than the Greystone Sand Dollar Pinot Gris. Where some Pinot…
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You might call me a “Pinot-phile”, but I can never get enough of those really good cool climate Pinots that present an aromatic nose, fragrant berries and which finish just a touch dry. The Kiwis have always done Pinot well and the Greystone Waipara Pinot Noir 2008 is no exception to the rule. What is…
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