Mt Difficulty Templars Hill Central Otago Pinot Noir 2020

Mt Difficulty Templars Hill Central Otago Pinot Noir 2020French oak Dark fruit Baking spices Long finish "It's immediately appealing on the nose with sweet cherry, green olive, clove and toasted nut aromas, leading to a delightfully flavoursome palate that's juicy and silky. Beautifully rounded and elegantly composed with a lengthy smooth finish. At its best: now to 2026" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, May 2022 Delicate violet florals and warm baking spices lead to a cascade of blue and black fruit on the palate with

• French oak
• Dark fruit
• Baking spices
• Long finish

"It's immediately appealing on the nose with sweet cherry, green olive, clove and toasted nut aromas, leading to a delightfully flavoursome palate that's juicy and silky. Beautifully rounded and elegantly composed with a lengthy smooth finish. At its best: now to 2026" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, May 2022

Delicate violet florals and warm baking spices lead to a cascade of blue and black fruit on the palate with warm earthy spiced and a long finish. Templars Hill Pinot Noir will improve for 3-5 years given optimal cellaring conditions.

The grapes for this wine come from our Cromwell basin vineyards managed by our dedicated viticultural team.

2020 sets a new benchmark for tricky seasons, but ultimately produced wines of exceptional quality. The growing season was introduced by a wet, cold and windy spring. These conditions continued through our key flowering and fruit set periods in October and December. Disturbed weather patterns continued right through January, and whilst the weather settled in February it was not its usual scorching self. We experienced cool periods through both veraison and ripening; delaying and then slowing down our harvest. Ultimately these conditions resulted in superb fruit condition with no disease pressure, and the small berries were bursting with flavour.

The majority of the fruit was destemmed to enhance the natural fruit characters of Pinot Noir from the Cromwell Basin. A small proportion was retained as whole cluster, with the aim of building texture and structure. The grapes stayed in the fermenter on average for a total of 19-21 days, with temperatures peaking at 28 - 30°C. The wine was plunged once daily both during pre-fermentation and during fermentation. Post-fermentation the wine was left to extract with no further punch downs. When the wine tasted in harmony it was pressed off to French oak where it resided on lees for 10 months. It underwent malolactic fermentation during early spring, was racked out of barrel in early-summer with filtration, but no fining, prior to bottling.