Urlar Estate Gladstone Pinot Noir 2020
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Garnet Red, Unfiltered. Laden with earthy spice aromas, bright red and dark fruits with a touch of red licorice and floral notes. The wine has great fruit intensity while still showing classic Wairarapa savory elements. Long fine tannins make the wine linger and imprint a sense of place.
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Wine Spectator
Crushed raspberry puree, black cherry and cranberry flavors have a terrific presence, with fresh and juicy details, including dragon-well tea, white pepper and forest floor, plus notes of clove and spice that linger on the finish.
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Economic and environmental sustainability are Urlar's driving principals. These practices are about giving life back to the soil and managing the vineyard as a balanced sustainable unit. This includes organic practices such as recycling through composts and liquid manures and increasing plant biodiversity. Using the biodynamic farming and gardening calendar, the rhythmic influences of the sun, moon, planets and stars are recognized and worked where possible. This commitment has been recognized and rewarded recently when they won the Hills Harvest and Gallagher Innovation Awards. The result is beautiful, clean, true wines that have not impacted negatively on the soil as they have been crafted.
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.”
At the southern end of the North Island about an hour drive from New Zealand’s capital city of Wellington, Wairarapa’s producers are mainly small-scale, lifestyle winemakers. The region holds less than 3% of the country’s acreage under vine but nearly one tenth of its winemakers.
Considering topography, soil and climate, Wairarapa is similar to Marlborough except that it is better at producing Pinot noir. Martinborough is a main subregion.