Oyster Bay Pinot Noir 2020

Fragrant dark cherry with juicy black plum, elegant and silky.

We use a combination of barrel and tank fermentation and mature the wine in a mix of new and older French oak.

Oyster Bay Marlborough Pinot Noir is elegant, cool climate Pinot Noir at its best. Fragrant, soft and flavourful, with aromas of ripe cherries and sweet fruit tannins that provide structure and length.

The philosophy of Oyster Bay is to produce fine, distinctively regional wines that are elegant and assertive with glorious fruit flavours.

The Marlborough region located at the top of New Zealand’s South Island provides a dry, sunny, but temperate climate, which allows the grapes a long, slow period of ripening spanning from January to April. The clear, cold nights keep acid levels high in the grapes, even when their sugars are rising. These day/night temperature variations are a crucial climatic influence that retains the grapes’ crisp, fresh, vibrant fruit characters. Soil Type Brancott and Renwick soils – Pinot Noir is particularly site-specific and responds best to these uniform, moderately fertile, silt overlaying clay loams, with moderate water-holding capacity

As a founding member of Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand, we are conscious of our environment and we work hard to identify sensitive areas such as wetlands, streams, and native vegetation to ensure that our vineyard practices do not affect the plants and animals that inhabit these areas. We minimize our water usage through our state-of-the-art soil moisture probe technology. We look after our soils by having interrow ground cover plantings, and by spreading our mulch underneath our vines, to provide a botanically diverse ground which encourages beneficial insects into our vineyards.

The fruit was picked from selected vineyard blocks to provide blending components and more complexity to the wine. The fruit was destemmed and crushed directly into a combination of open and closed-top stainless steel fermentation tanks. Following pre-fermentation maceration, the must was inoculated with a range of pure yeast cultures. The open ferment was hand-plunged up to three times a day and a small portion of the blend was run off to complete fermentation in French oak barriques. After 7 days total maceration time, the wine was pressed off into tank and French oak barriques to complete malolactic fermentation. The wine was then matured for 11 months and racked prior to final blending.

Oak was selected from the Allier, Jupilles, and Tronçais regions in France. The tight grains of this wood are less tannic, more aromatic and provide layers of texture and complexity to the wine. These were seasoned for a minimum twoyear period and medium toasted, ensuring no harsh tannins and heightened aromatic potential.