Joy with the “heartbreak grape”
A Central Otago winery continues to make major waves internationally with its Pinot Noirs, as Joelle Thomson explains...
One of the world’s biggest wine competitions has awarded one of the world’s smallest wineries its ‘Best in Show’ title this year in London.
The winning wine is the 2022 McArthur Ridge Southern Tor Pinot Noir and it scored 97/100 points at the Decanter World Wine awards in June. It’s a lithe, elegant expression of Pinot Noir (rather than an overwhelming blockbuster) and all the better for it.
The Decanter World Wine Awards is one of the world’s largest and most influential wine competitions. It has a rigorous judging process and a long track record, which makes it doubly gratifying for the owners of McArthur Ridge, who produced their first wine in 2007.
The winemaker today is Matt Connell, one of the most experienced in Central Otago and a dab hand at Pinot Noir, in case that wasn’t self-evident.
The 2022 McArthur Ridge Brassknocker Pinot Noir also won the New Zealand Pinot Noir Trophy at the 2024 International Wine Competition in July.
Central Otago is the region best known for Pinot Noir in New Zealand because the winemakers there have a staunch devotion to “the heartbreak grape”, as Pinot is often known, both in jest and not. It is just not an easy grape to grow or make money from, even in a region as vast, varied and diverse in climatic zones as Central Otago.
Vines are planted as far north as Wanaka and Waitaki (North Otago, strictly speaking) and then in Bendigo, Northburn, Lowburn, Pisa, around Cromwell, Bannockburn, Alexandra, and Gibbston Valley. This means that Central Otago is far from one region, and its winemakers create highly diverse styles of wine as a result of so many variable climate factors. Not to mention their own winemaking philosophies and approaches.
Pinot Noir occupies at least 80% of the 2,054 hectares of producing vineyard land in Central today and there are 143 wineries there, making it second only
to Marlborough in terms of registered wineries. This is impressive for a region so young and so unknown until the 1990s, but certainly in the spotlight now with its consistent run of prestigious wins.
Wine to try
2022 McArthur Ridge Southern Tor Pinot Noir - RRP $36.99
Brandhouse
Southern Tor Pinot Noir has a seductive lightness of touch that comes through in its bright fruit-forward aromas of ripe red cherries and macerated plums that lead into a wine of power and depth. This is a complex, youthful wine that sits in a beautiful drinking window right now and will evolve to a lithe, silky Pinot within the next six to seven years.
Joelle Thomson is a journalist, wine writer and author.