Escarpment Martinborough Pinot Noir 2013
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Product Details
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Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very complete wine that has a complex, rich nose with plenty of ripe-cherry and red-berry fruits, some distinct herbal threads, chocolate, flowers and deeply earthy notes. The palate has composure, structure and density, silky at the edges, carrying plenty of cherry and plum flavor. Great length, too: so well-balanced as to appear effortless. The best Escarpment estate-blend pinot to date. Range: 94-95
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Wine Spectator
Powerful and concentrated, with dense tannins and generous maraschino cherry, wild raspberry and plum flavors at the core, accented by pine, fresh earth and cigar box.
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Wine Enthusiast
Escarpment's basic blended Pinot is anything but basic in 2013. There's a pleasing mixture of red and black fruit, notes of dried flowers and thyme and hints of mocha, cola and vanilla. It's medium bodied, with a firm feel on the palate and some dusty tannins on the long finish. It should drink well through 2023.
Other Vintages
2019-
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Robert
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Robert
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Robert
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Robert
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Escarpment Vineyard was established in 1999 as a joint business venture between Robert & Mem Kirby (of Australia's Village Roadshow) and Larry & Sue McKenna. Collectively, these four directors bring to Escarpment a world of experience, skill and understanding to the nurturing and making of fine, deliciously sublime wine. It goes without saying the impetus behind establishing this vineyard came from the four's deep love for Pinot Noir. Meeting by chance in 1999 through Dr Richard Smith, Larry and Robert quickly hit it off and realised they had more than a love for the grape in common. Serious talk about establishing a definitive New World vineyard began in earnest even then and the 'idea whose time has come' has resulted in one of the most significant vineyard developments in the New Zealand district of Martinborough. Escarpment is accredited with Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand, an industry initiative directed through New Zealand Winegrowers. With a growing trade and consumer demand for environmentally friendly products, it provides an important platform to promote the New Zealand wine industry as a world leader in clean, green wine production.
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.”
Part of the Wairarapa region in the southern end of the country’s North Island, Martinborough is a bucolic appellation full of artisan, lifestyle wine producers. Above all else, their goals are to tend vineyards for low yields and create wines of supreme quality. Pinot noir is the main grape variety here, occupying over half of the land under vine.
Comparing topography, climate and soils, the region is nearly identical to Marlborough except that it produces top quality reds on the regular.