Decanter World Wine Awards
New Zealand Pinot Noir offers best value
Image: Rippon Estate, Wanaka, Central Otago
While Burgundy remains the home of Pinot Noir, value is often hard to find. Yet in New Zealand, despite the current strength of the New Zealand dollar, quality comes at a fraction of the price of a Burgundy.
The average vine in New Zealand is still relatively young in European terms, so the best is hopefully yet to come. In the winery, producers are stil experimenting with the variety including whole bunch fermentation trials to provide more structure yet it seems the style is already pleasing to the Decanter judges.
Central Otago’s Domain Road and Akarua are included in the top five best value for money Pinot Noirs. The deeply coloured Central appearance, black fruit and herbal notes, and the region’s united marketing efforts have put the region in the Pinot limelight. Fellow south island producers Black Estate of Waipara and Villa Maria’s Cellar Selection Marlborough also scored highly to receive a gold medal and a spot in the top five value Pinots.
Have your say!
Andrew
August 09 08:40
All power to them! black estate in particular are producing outstanding wines.
The Basset
August 09 01:32
Agreed. But beware the creeping prestige dilution phenomenon: new wine producers are springing up in Central Otago and Martinborough (the top regions) and trading on the regional name while producing inferior pinots.
Andy Whiteman
August 08 10:49
Brilliant - the Burgundians really are up themselves - they are believing their own PR and have very little contact with reality.
Additionally the quality at lower price points in Burgundy is so variable from domaine to domaine and vintage to vintage for Pinot that it makes the region even more of a lottery.
As a great lover of Pinot from Burgundy this makes me sad - but now it is hard to get anything worth drinking for much under £20.00 at the cellar door let alone through UK merchants, it means that Pinot Noir is becoming a a faded memory for me both personally and on my wine list - very sad.