Prophet's Rock - 'Pinot Gris' 2023

Prophet's Rock - 'Pinot Gris' 2023

NZD$42.00
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Description

This Pinot Gris amazingly consistent in style and quality, sweet pear and red apple aromas with hints of white spice and white flowers. The palate is medium in body with concentrated fruit notes and finishes with a splash of acidity, followed by crunchy mineral and light phenolics adding to the complexity and giving structure to the wine. Well balanced and delicious as always!

This textured and aromatic Pinot Gris comes from a classic’ vintage for Central Otago. A warm summer followed by a long fine autumn giving the wines ripeness whilst retaining great freshness. The structure and weight of this wine makes it a versatile food match from seafood to white meats and which can also be paired with spice and stronger flavours. This wine will continue to cellar well for further complexity over the next 7-10 years.

The Prophet’s Rock Pinot Gris has received exceptional reviews since the first release in 2007 and has been a matched wine on the degustation menu at Heston Blumenthal’s Michelin three-starred restaurant The Fat Duck. Winner of the Air New Zealand Fine Wine Award for New Zealand’s top iconic wines since the award started in 2016.

“Scents that start stony and savoury, a whiff of kombu and mushroom over peach, pear fruitiness. The palate has nashi pear, a lick of pink grapefruit freshness, halva and cashew nutty savouriness, a lick of truffle-like quality too. Slippery texture that draws long and finishes with lingering sweet spice and a little stony mineral quality. Excellent here, but drink young.” – The Winefront

“An off-dry style with powerful acidity packing in sweet ripe pears and apples. Fresh aromas and gentle pastry notes, too. This has it all. Drink now.” – JamesSuckling.com

 

Winemaker’s Notes

Pinot Gris has always been a strong focus for Prophet’s Rock. We farm our aromatic whites to the same high standard in the vineyard as our top Pinot Noir and take time through all aspects of production to ensure that the wine we release is the best reflection of the site it can be.

The grapes for this wine are hand-picked from our estate vineyards with the predominate source being the Rocky Point Vineyard. This site has warm free-draining, predominantly schist soils with some of the steepest planted blocks in Central Otago.

Extensive canopy and crop management is carried out during the growing season to ensure the grapes attained full physiological ripeness with great concentration, aromatics, and flavour. Yields on all sites are kept very low and do not exceed 38hl/ha or 5t/ha.

The handpicked fruit is 100% whole-bunch pressed over 5-6 hours and fermented using only indigenous ‘wild’ yeast in old barrels. Fermentation typically takes 3-4 months and the finished wine is then aged without racking on gross lees until bottling just before the following vintage. The wine is bottled under Diam cork

--------THE PRODUCER--------

Prophet's Rock

Two vineyards were established in the Bendigo sub-region: The Prophet’s Rock Home Vineyard and, subsequently, the Rocky Point. Both are steep and elevated, and each is distinctive – The Home Vineyard with its rare mix of soils, including schist, clay and chalk, and Rocky Point with its stony ground and almost treacherous slopes. The winemaker is Paul Pujol, who has spent many years refining his trade working in France’s classical wine regions of the Languedoc, Sancerre and, crucially, Burgundy and Alsace and also Oregon in the USA.

 

--------THE GRAPE--------

Pinot Gris

 

--------THE REGION--------

Central Otago

Central Otago is one of the most southerly wine regions in the world and it is most commonly referred to as Pinot Central, in New Zealand. It has a long history of winemaking dating back to the mid 1800s and in fact a 'Burgundy' from Central Otago won a gold medal in a Sydney wine competition in 1881. A few winemakers including Alan Brady helped to craft it into a leading Pinot Noir region for the world thanks to his fruit-bombs. Many fantastic aromatic white wines excel here also.