Gibbston Valley - Central Otago

Heres a photo of where our Central Otago Pinot Noir comes from. Its the Gibbston Valley area. The climate is often described as the only area of New Zealand with a Continental type climate as opposed to the NZ norm which is a Maritime climate. Nowhere in NZ is too far from the sea but this is about as far as it get and the area is surrounded by mountains.

The typical seasonal weather pattern here is for a long season with hot summer temperatures and frost risks at the start and finish of the season. Gibbston its traditionally the coolest of the Central Otago sub-regions where harvesting can be as much as 3 or even 4 weeks after hotter areas like Bannockburn. As a result of the long season the grapes easily attain high levels of sugar ripeness together with well structured tannins and reasonable levels of acidity.

The resultant wines are often darkly coloured with highly perfumed aromas and intense fruit flavours married with a good tannin and acid structure. It is undoubtedly one of the more beautiful wine regions in the world and has attracted a large amount of foreign investment on the back of the growth of NZ Pinot Noir internationally.

In this photo our vineyards are on the gentle slopes here which flow down to the main Queenstown-Cromwell highway. On the other side of the road you can make out the Peregrine Winery on the left of the photo.

Tannin taming...

Ive just attended the NZSVO Pinot Noir Tannin Management Workshop. There was a really good mix of topics covering everything from the vineyard to the winery, from chemical analysis to practical solutions. The event was attended by around 150 people from practically all Pinot producing wineries in the South Island.

The keynote speaker was James Kennedy from Oregon State University who outlined work they had been doing on skin and seed tannin management in the vineyard and its extraction in the winery. Among the other interesting speakers were Matt Dicey from Mt Difficulty with practical insight into Pinot Noir maceration and Gareth King of Felton Road who spoke about understanding vineyard soils and influencing fruit exposure and crop load.

There was also a great tasting session which directly compared the influence of differing soil types, clones, yields, maceration techniques and harvest methods on levels of tannin found in the wines.

This kind of event can only be good news for NZ as we strive to increase the overall quality of Pinot Noir. Everybody seems to be on the same page, as they say, in this regard.

David Jordan summed up the conference by saying that NZ pinot Noir is well on track to eclipse Sauvignon Blanc as the countries flagship export varietal within 5 years. And so it should do, especially with vintages like 2008 not doing SB any favours (a can of worms to I wont open here but of which Im sure we havent heard the last of it yet)