• Dry style
• Strawberry & stonefruit
• Creamy mousse
• Focused acidity

A delicate salmon pink in the glass, this elegant méthode traditionnalle Rosé displays fresh strawberry, hints of ripe stonefruit and underlying notes of brioche and toasted hazelnut. The fine persistent bead and creamy mousse lead to a rich and weighty palate balanced with focused acidity and biscuity complexity derived from yeast autolysis. Elegant integration of primary fruit flavours derived from Pinot Noir grapes take this generous and rounded wine to a smooth, lively and lingering finish.

The Pinot Noir grapes for this wine are sourced from the high river terrace blocks that surround our winery located in Marlborough’s Awatere Valley. The 2016/2017 growing season in Marlborough began with some erratic conditions over flowering, which acted to naturally moderate the fruit levels. A windy and warm summer promoted slow, steady ripening in the vines. Unseasonal early autumn rains that fell in early March caused some concern, however meticulous canopy management from our vineyard team mitigated the effects of the rain, with bright, clean fruit harvested on the 21st March 2017.

Once at the winery select Point Noir grapes are gently pressed using our modern membrane press, resulting in low-yields of juice with only a subtle colour pick-up from the skins. The pressed juice is cold settled in tank for around 48 hours until brilliantly clear, before being racked into a small stainless steel tanks for fermentation. The fermentation is carried out at low temperatures with a neutral yeast, and once dry the wine is aged on lees while undergoing malolactic fermentation. The resulting base wine is then filtered and ready for tirage - or bottling, with the secondary yeast ferment in the bottle (which creates the bubbles) lasting around three weeks. Once all the bottles are finished fermentation they are stored away in temperaturecontrolled warehouse for an extended 50 months on yeast lees, before disgorging with a little reserve Pinot Noir used to create a delicate blush hue.