Auntsfield continues the proud heritage of Marlborough’s first vineyard and winery established in 1873.
Our Single Vineyard wines are made from grapes grown at Auntsfield Estate. Each wine shows the distinctive characteristics of ripeness, texture and minerality – qualities unique to the ancient Greywacke rock and Loess clay soils of the vineyard. Pinot Noir holds a special place in our hearts. We grow the grapes and make this wine with particular care and attention. The resulting wines are distinctive for their lifted aromatics, silky mouth feel and the powerful expression of pure fruit, ripe tannin and balanced oak.
COLOUR: Deep ruby
AROMA: Ripe dark raspberry and plum fruit is subtly lifted by layers of dark red florals and complex savoury aromas of dark chocolate, cigar box, barbequed meat and olive tapenade.
PALATE: The palate of this wine shows a rich silky texture, which is full and concentrated. Flavours of ripe raspberry and dark plumbs fill the pallet. This fruit is supported by powerful yet fine grained tannins giving a plush yet silky texture to the pallet with seamless length.
ANALYSIS: Alc. 14.0% | pH 3.43 | TA 5.1
WINEMAKER NOTES: This wine was made with a minimalist philosophy, designed to enable the characteristics of the grapes and the vineyard to be revealed. The fruit was hand-harvested, hand-sorted, gently destemmed and gravity-fed to tank. Fermented with a combination of indigenous and cultured yeasts, careful hand plunging was utilised to gently extract flavours and tannins from the skins. Maturation occurred in French oak barriques for approximately 10 months.
VITICULTURALIST NOTES: The 2016 season was characterised by moderate yields resulting excellent vine growth from rainfall at key growth stages in the Spring. A very dry and warm summer followed with vineyard work focused around reduced yields by hand to optimal levels. This allowed the fruit to ripen over an extended period of time in the cool and settled conditions of early autumn. A season that rewarded vigilance, lower cropping levels and delayed ripening in the vineyard.
