Gardo & Morris Marlborough Pinot Noir 2019

Gardo & Morris Marlborough Pinot Noir 2019French oak Raspberries Sweet butterscotch Rich & mouth filling "Beautifully ripe and wonderfully complex, the wine shows dark cherry, spiced plum, clove, olive and toasted nut aromas on the nose. It's equally satisfying on the palate with excellent concentration and flow, leading to a lengthy silky finish. Graceful and multi layered with loads of seductive flavours. At its best: now to 2026" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, Dec 2020 Ripe blackberries, raspberries

• French oak
• Raspberries
• Sweet butterscotch
• Rich & mouth filling

"Beautifully ripe and wonderfully complex, the wine shows dark cherry, spiced plum, clove, olive and toasted nut aromas on the nose. It's equally satisfying on the palate with excellent concentration and flow, leading to a lengthy silky finish. Graceful and multi-layered with loads of seductive flavours. At its best: now to 2026" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, Dec 2020

Ripe blackberries, raspberries and dark cherries combine with the delicate perfume of wild strawberries and almonds creating a wine of great concentration. On the palate these rich, mouth filling characters combine with wild strawberries and a sweet butterscotch note.

Their Marlborough Pinot Noir is machine picked in the cool of night from several vineyards in the Awatere Valley and Southern Valley of Marlborough. The vineyards all have a mix of clay and silt soil types. Low yields of around 3-4 ton / acre and a dry summer created perfect ripening conditions, March and April were dry and warm, and the low yielding crop ripened to optimum maturity, the berries were very small and concentrated this year giving extra concentration to the wine. Machine harvesting in the cool evenings then grapes are gently crushed into small open top fermenters, after one week cold maceration natural yeast fermentation took place with regular hand plunging. After 4-5 weeks on skins the wine was gently run off by gravity and the skins were gently pressed. The wine then underwent maturation in 228L French barriques in the traditional burgundy style. Full malolactic fermentation in barrique has softened the acidity and added complexity. The wine is aged in barrique for approx 12 months, then after a light egg white fining it was bottled unfiltered.

Gardo & Morris is a small family-run boutique New Zealand Winery. Their aim is to create exceptional single vineyard wines from New Zealand’s finest winegrowing regions. These wines are made to complement food and reflect flavours of the vineyard site and grape variety. They believe that by working with small vineyard areas they are able to pick the very best fruit and with gentle treatment in the winery turn this into unique handcrafted wines. Benjamin Morris studied his Master of Applied Science (Oenology) at Lincoln University in New Zealand where he specialised in research on producing organic wines without the addition of preservatives. Creating their wines with minimal vineyard sprays and additives is very important to them as it helps them produce pure clean wines and has the added benefit of sustaining a healthy environment.

Food Pairing: Best to be served around 16°C accompanied with oven roasted duck in an elegant sauce, a heavily buttered fillet of Monk Fish or even lighter courses of venison.