Te tera Pinot noir 2009

TASTING NOTES

Sumptuous red fruit and spicy notes on the nose lead to silky smooth, rounded tannins with layers of fruit and complexity coming through on the palate. We know you will enjoy the 2009 as much as previous vintages.

VINEYARD

Our Pinot Noir blocks are hand harvested from vines ageing up to 29 years – some of New Zealand’s oldest Pinot Noir vines. A range of 10 clones including Abel, 10/5 and some of the newer Dijon clones are planted and give complexity to the final blend.

The vineyards are situated on the Martinborough Terrace, which is famed for its deep, free draining, ancient river bed soils which are ideal for making ultra premium Pinot Noir wines. 

The region has a cool, maritime climate along with other beneficial climatic drivers including a rain shadow, one of the country’s largest diurnal temperature differentials, windy springs and a long warm period through autumn.  All this results in a natural low-vigour site regulating crops and enabling high quality, consistent, ripe fruit.

VINIFICATION

All fruit is carefully sorted in the vineyard at harvest and again in the winery before being processed. All the fruit for Te Tera Pinot Noir is destemmed and carefully tipped into 5-6T open fermentors.

The wine underwent a cool pre-ferment maceration for 5-8 days and spent an average time on skins of about 20 days before all being pressed to French oak barrels. The wine undergoes malolactic fermentation in barrel and remained on its lees for 10 months before racking, blending and bottling.

Indigenous yeasts are used which add to the wine’s complexity in addition to traditional methods of punching down the ferments by hand.

SEASON

We entered the 2009 growing season with good soil moisture and warm, settled spring conditions ensuing an excellent flowering. This was ideal for even fruit formation and above average crop levels, meaning we had to carry out extensive fruit thinning and shoulder removal in January to reduce crop levels. February was warm with the occasional heat spike (remember the Melbourne wild fires) with picking starting on the 29th March. We had three vineyard passes over two weeks to pick these grapes and were pleased to avoid any botrytis.