Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir 2020
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Wine
Spectator -
James
Suckling
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
The 2020 Pinot Noir is fragrant, appealing and aromatic. Rose petals, dark cherries and blackberries fill the nose. On the palate, a core of rounded bramble fruit, ripe boysenberry and wild strawberry is unpinned by silky tannins and fine acidity. A concentrated yet elegant wine.
Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir is the perfect wine to take when you don’t know what’s for dinner. Versatile and food-friendly, it has a signature silky elegance. A benchmark Marlborough wine, Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir is proof that Marlborough’s climate and clay soils make it much more than a one-grape region.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Impressive, showing generous plush, juicy flavors of raspberry, blueberry and ripe plum at the pure core, with details of dried lavender, white pepper, black tea and star anise. Reveals hints of bittersweet chocolate on the long, expressive finish.
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James Suckling
Aromas of baked strawberries, red cherries, rosemary and porcini mushroom. Medium- to full-bodied with soft tannins. Juicy and fresh on the palate with a mineral undertone. Wet stone and overturned earth come through.
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Cloudy Bay Vineyards, established in 1985, is today a partnership between champagne house Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin and co-founder of Cape Mentelle Vineyards in Western Australia, David Hohnen. The Cloudy Bay team is committed to producing 'wines of region' and strives to enhance the pure, bracing flavors naturally afforded by the climate and soils of Marlborough. The winery and vineyards are situated in the Wairau Valley in Marlborough at the northern end of New Zealand's South Island. This unique and cool wine region enjoys a maritime climate with the longest hours of sunshine of any place in New Zealand. Cloudy Bay has estate vineyards located at prime sites within the Wairau Valley and long-term supply agreements with five Wairau Valley growers. The main varieties grown are Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
An icon and leading region of New Zealand's distinctive style of Sauvignon blanc, Marlborough has a unique terroir, making it ideal for high quality grape production (of many varieties). Despite some common generalizations, which could be fairly justified given that Marlborough is responsible for 90% of New Zealand's Sauvignon blanc production, the wines from this region are actually anything but homogenous. At the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, the vineyards of Marlborough benefit from well-draining, stony soils, a dry, sunny climate and wide temperature fluctuations between day and night, a phenomenon that supports a perfect balance between berry ripeness and acidity.
The region’s king variety, Sauvignon blanc, is beloved for its pungent, aromatic character with notes of exotic tropical fruit, freshly cut grass and green bell pepper along with a refreshing streak of stony minerality. These wines are made in a wide range of styles, and winemakers take advantage of various clones, vineyard sites, fermentation styles, lees-stirring and aging regimens to differentiate their bottlings, one from one another.
Also produced successfully here are fruit-forward Pinot noirs (especially where soils are clay-rich), elegant Riesling, Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer.