Corofin Settlement Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 (1 Bottle), Marlborough NZ
$78.00 GST Included
AUSTRALIA WIDE SHIPPING INCLUDED
Organic. The 20-year-old Settlement Vineyard is located on the slopes of the Omaka Valley to the south of Marlborough’s Wairau Plains. This organic-certified site is owned by Dog Point and is managed by gun viticulturist Nigel Sowman. The fruit for this bottling hails from a tiny sliver of vines at the top of the vineyard’s east slope, a clay-rich parcel planted at 4,000 vines per hectare (all 777 clone).
Typically, the Settlement fruit is among the first to be picked and tends to sit in the red-fruited, youthfully radiant end of the Corofin single-vineyard spectrum. That said, Mike Paterson tells us he’s witnessed a significant evolution in the phenolic structure of the fruit in recent years, and as much plays out in the glass in 2022.
The fruit was picked by hand on 19th March and destemmed to a pair of one-tonne open fermenters. The bottom 15% of the fruit was crushed by foot, with the remaining berries kept intact. Extraction was gentle and occurred once a day. After 19 days, the wine was pressed to seasoned oak for 14 months’ maturation, followed by eight months in tank before bottling without fining or filtration.
“Strawberry, raspberry, some orange peel and potpourri perfume. It’s medium-bodied, quite fresh and slightly sappy, with fine dusty tannin grip, cherry pip and blood orange, with a lively and fragrant finish of excellent length. There’s a little dusting of white pepper in this wine, which I like, and it’s so finely wrought and lovely to drink. Yes.” 95 points, Gary Walsh, The Wine Front
Description
About Corofin
Established in 2011, Corofin is the new home for ex-Jackson Estate winesmith Mike Paterson and his partner Anna, until recently GM at TerraVin.
At this early juncture, while Mike is contracted to another project and Anna busy raising the couple’s two young daughters, Corofin craft two (soon to be three) single-vineyard Pinot Noirs, each in tiny 100-150-case lots. You can read about two of these “pretty special Marlborough sites” below (the third being the Weavers’ ‘Waihopi Slopes’ at Churton). Not too far down the line we’ll see a little Chardonnay as well.
For the time being the wines are made out of temporary digs at Fromm. Having spent the majority of their working years in and about Marlborough, Mike and Anna have no doubt regarding the potential of their adopted region, and were well placed to approach their first choice of vineyards.
On the one hand, our role as a merchant of all things wine & spirits could not be simpler. We aim to source the most delicious, the most authentic, and the highest quality products possible from Australia and around the world in order to offer them to our clients. We live or die by how well we perform this task. Of course things are rarely as simple or as easy as they seem. Hunting for wines & spirits is no different. Apart from the months spent travelling, countless days and evenings spent tasting and the outrageous wine expenditure in the name of ‘research’, sourcing quality wine and spirits requires expertise and experience. Understanding the potential of a producer and their products is much more than just a slurp and a spit.
