MAHI 2022 M'BOROUGH PINOT GRIS

Winemaking details
Our Marlborough Pinot Gris comes from one vineyard located just outside the township of Ward in the Awatere Valley. It is owned and managed by Sara Davies and Andrew Craig. The fruit was machine-picked to bin, so maceration was minimised, and a portion of this juice was barrel-fermented in older French oak to give greater weight, though ensuring that wood is not evident on the nose. The balance of the wine was fermented cool to retain the fruit characters that come from this special vineyard The final blend this year was made solely from free-run juice, as we feel it gives a more elegant and subtle wine, especially with Pinot Gris, that has quite ‘grey’ coloured skins and is inherently quite tannic.

Vintage
This year, our 22nd, was again distinctive and again it was early and some serious rainfall at veraison meant that the berries were bigger this year, so the crops were slightly higher. Starting on March the 10th we harvested quickly and finished the earliest ever. It was not a hot vintage, so the flavours were retained, but we felt the grapes were fragile so picked quickly as things ripened. We saw early on that it was a bigger year and, with cooler easterlies winds predominating, we decided to drop some bunches early, up to 18 bunches a vine in one parcel!? This really helped as the vines managed to get the remaining bunches ripe and we were happy with the health of the fruit. April saved us also as it only had 19% of normal rainfall and we nearly had the last month of no rain, which was so good. Slightly lower sugars this year means the wine is perhaps more elegant and refined but it still shows the texture we are looking for.