Reserve Marlborough Pinot Noir

Our Reserve Pinot Noir has delicious red berry flavours and a full, rich palate. Spicy oak and silky tannins combine for an elegant, lingering finish.

RESERVE MARLBOROUGH PINOT NOIR

Expertly crafted from our favourite vineyards, our Reserve wines have impressive flavour concentration and palate weight. Adorning every label on every bottle of Rapaura Springs wine is a simple symbol – a circle of rocks that signify the pure spring in our home vineyard in the heart of Marlborough, New Zealand. Our label and our name represent our intimate connection to the pristine waters that collect high in the Southern Alps and are gradually filtered beneath the region’s braided rivers, refreshing the deep underground aquifers that feed our vines, and bubble up in our own Rapaura Springs.

WINEMAKING NOTES

The 2023 growing season started with above average bunch numbers in most districts in Marlborough. Unsettled and cooler weather over flowering resulted in loose and lighter bunches, with the net effect of producing average yields across most varieties and regions. The weather around the time of veraison was unstable, and at times threatening. We just missed out on the destruction of the cyclone that hit the east coast of the North Island. The weather then settled into a pattern reminiscent of the harvests in the early 2000s. The nights were particularly cool, and this helped to arrest any small levels of botrytis that had started in the early unsettled weather. It was a vintage where patience was rewarded and those who waited harvested fully ripe grapes with concentrated flavours and classic acidity. The fruit for our Reserve Marlborough Pinot Noir is from a selection of premium Pinot Noir vineyard sites in the Southern Valleys and Ward subregions. After harvest, the fruit was cold soaked for around five days to extract flavour, tannins, and colour. Fermentation followed, in a selection of small open top tanks, using a selection of wild and selected yeasts. Each ferment was plunged twice a day. The wine was left to macerate for five days before a gentle pressing off the skins. The wine underwent maloctic fermentation while aging in oak. The final blend includes 20% new oak.

Cellaring Recommendation

Enjoy now, or cellar for up to three years.

2023 Tasting Note 2022 Tasting Note  2021 Tasting Note