Nautilus Estate Southern Valleys Marlborough Pinot Noir 2016

Nautilus Estate Southern Valleys Marlborough Pinot Noir 2016"The Wairau Valley is the original part of Marlborough, but the southern valleys have emerged as the best source of pinot noir red wines. This has good depth of colour and palate weight and richness. Dark cherry, charcuterie and smoked meat aromas, nicely ripe and lavishly oaked. A serious Pinot" Huon Hooke, Real Review, Jan 2020 The 2016 Nautilus Pinot Noir is dark ruby in colour. The nose reveals lifted floral aromas, ripe wild blackberries,

"The Wairau Valley is the original part of Marlborough, but the southern valleys have emerged as the best source of pinot noir red wines. This has good depth of colour and palate weight and richness. Dark cherry, charcuterie and smoked-meat aromas, nicely ripe and lavishly oaked. A serious Pinot" Huon Hooke, Real Review, Jan 2020

The 2016 Nautilus Pinot Noir is dark ruby in colour. The nose reveals lifted floral aromas, ripe wild blackberries, cherries and spices. The palate is medium bodied with good structure. Refined and balanced, this elegant wine shows good intensity and a lengthy finish. The primary fruit components showing in the wines youth will further develop and integrate over the next five years as the wine matures.

Prior to Christmas all the talk was about drought. Fruit set was good but would with enough water to get through the season and what effect would this have on bunch size. Certainly the river was low. But of course Mother Nature intervened and a couple of timely rains in January during the critical phase when the berries size up meant that a crop that was looking average at best ended up above average in size. A key feature this year was lower acidity (by normal Marlborough standards), bright fruit flavours and a nice mineral texture across all the wines.

To make this wine, fruit from Pinot Noir clones 114, 115, 5, 667, 777 and Abel was hand harvested and de-stemmed without crushing to allow a portion of whole berries in the ferment. A small amount of whole bunch fruit was also included in some ferments (average 18% whole bunch). The grapes were fermented with indigenous yeast in open top fermenters after a 6-8 day ‘cold soak’. Careful cap management, using our pneumatic punch down device, has resulted in extraction of only the soft ripe tannins. After pressing the wine was racked directly to a mixture of new and older French oak Barriques, where it remained undisturbed until filtration and bottling in March 2017.

Food Pairing: Beautiful accompanied by Venison with Star Anise.