Premium Pinot Noir

2008 Two Paddocks Pinot Noir

A blend made from our three vineyards – Gibbston, Alexandra, and Redbank at Earnscleugh, this wine is a quintessential cool climate Pinot Noir. As in the vineyard, this wine is handcrafted using traditional methods and aged in small French oak barrels for 11 months, using a mix of older and new (30%) barrels.

Winemakers Tasting Notes:

Dark black fruit, spicy notes and dried herb aromas. This is a dense, dark brooding wine showing loads of texture, depth and persistence. This wine will benefit with bottle age. Approachable in its youth, it will mellow with age. The fruit was picked by different vineyard block and by clone. Each pick was fermented separately, with the final blending taking place prior to bottling.

Vintage Comments:

As usual the 2008 vintage provided its fair share of challenges, the most notable being early frosts in Gibbston and late frosts in the Alexandra basin. But on the whole it pretty good season with excellent fruit set followed by near perfect weather during the growing season. This is undoubtly our biggest crop to date which in time will give us a classic Central Otago Pinot – elegant, complex and well structured full of the typical spice and fruit.

Viticulturalist: Richard Flatman

Winemaker: Dean Shaw -- Central Otago Wine Company

Bottled: 7 - 9 April 2009

Total Production: 3791 cases

Exported to:Australia, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Ontario, United States

Release Date: February 2010

Cellaring: 2009 – 2016

Reviews:

...is deeper and darker in colour with a black cherry richness to the hue. The beguiling aroma of dark cherry fruit and smoky savoury oak leads into a concentrated beautifully structured wine with a silky seamless impression across the palate. Earthy and savoury with firm yet seductive tannins; black cherry and redcurrant fruit well up from within and a hint of chocolate emerges on the lingering finish. While lighter in concentration than the small volume big wines that Central Otago produced in 2007 and 2009, this has lovely fruit balance and exactly the right amount of acidity to give the wine brightness without losing any of its quintessential savoury charm. This is gorgeous to drink already and tastes simply delicious when accompanied with Spiced Duck Leg Samosa. -- 2 August 2010, Sue Courtney, Wine of the Week (wineoftheweek.com)

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Most of the blind tasters placed this wine in Burgundy, which is certainly a credit to Sam Neill's wine-making team. We guessed correctly, first time, that it was from Central Otago. This may have been because we had a New Zealander on our team, but also the nose was ripe, with distinctive black cherry and spice aromas—an immediate giveaway. The wine is a blend from three vineyards: Gibbston, Alexandra and Redbank, and although some Central Otago Pinots can be a little too fruity for my taste, the palate here is quite silky and fine. Taking into account that Two Paddocks only began in 1993, when five acres of vineyards were planted, the future appears very promising indeed.
-- 19 November 2010, Will Lyon, Wall Street Journal