Cheers to world’s best
Its aroma resembles a raspberry coulis.
When it hits the tastebuds, raspberry notes come through until it mellows out into cocoa nib and chocolate, finishing with a nice spice from the oak.
That’s what the world’s best pinot noir tastes like.
The Takapoto Single Vineyard Bannockburn Pinot Noir 2012 comes from the hands of Karapiro man Andy Anderson.
In his 19th vintage, Anderson won the Pinot Noir Trophy 2017 at the International Wine and Spirit Competition.
‘‘I think the hallmark of the wines I make, they tend to be really silky . . . and it’s just how I treat the wines to start with.’’
Dubbed as ’’the Oscars of wine’’ by Anderson, it came as shock for the 48-year old who will accept the trophy in London next month.
‘‘I don’t know what to do with myself, I haven’t slept very well for three weeks.’’
It’s the first awards he has entered but there’s a reason for that.
‘‘I purposely held this wine back really for this show because this is the one you want to win.’’
The pinot is fairly new on the market - and it’s only available in New Zealand with around 150 cases made each vintage.
‘‘We’re in no rush to sell it because it’s made to age, I’d prefer it when it’s about five years old.’’
It’s all done at Te Kauwhata’s Invivo Wines located in northern Waikato.
Anderson and Invivo co-owner Rob Cameron were fellow classmates in the first batch of students for the Bachelor of Viticulture and Oenology at Lincoln University.
They re-connected almost a decade ago and have worked together since.
With the fruit sourced from the Viticultura’s Legends Terrace vineyard in Central Otago, the process takes up to 14 months from when the de-stemmed grapes arrive until bottling.
The fruit is in transit for around three to four days, but even in that time the magic starts.
‘‘It just sits there and starts macerating and sometimes it starts fermenting. When it comes to us, I’ll use the trusty 20 litre bucket and bucket out half a tonne at a time into the fermenters.
‘‘It’s really quite hands on, making sure the yeast is natural from the vineyard, just don’t play with it, just let it do its thing.’’
‘‘I use all natural yeast from the vineyard, I don’t inoculate, I don’t add anything, there’s no tannin added, there’s nothing at all. Once it’s finished, it goes through secondary fermentation naturally as it occurs which is called malolactic and then bottled it, unfined, unfiltered, very low sulphur which is kind of unusual.’’
Red wines have been Anderson’s forte following two vintages in South Australia’s Barossa Valley during his early winemaking years.
Since then he’s racked up experience in other Australian wineries, and had stints in London as well as Spain before returning to New Zealand to take over the Cambridge Fine Wine shop.
He has since sold it, but it was there the story of Takapoto Estate Pinot Noir began when he met estate owner Mitchell Plaw.
‘‘We got on pretty well and started chatting, and over the next year he was telling me how much he loved Central Otago pinot and I said ‘why don’t I make you one?’ And so 2012 was our first vintage... Mitch and his wife Kate said they were right into it. He just said go for it, do what you need to do, just don’t screw it up.’’
With his connections in the South Island region, he visited Legend’s Terrace to test out the grapes.
‘‘Basically I tasted all the way through the top, into the middle and down to the bottom and I marked out all the areas I really liked. The idea was to make a very small amount of high end pinot noir, so I used the best oak I could find, after consultation with other winemakers.’’
One of the unusual things was using 100 per cent new oak.
It’s not often done as it can dominate the fruit, he said.
‘‘But 12 is a really good vintage and it worked, I didn’t have any choice because I didn’t have any old oak but hey.’’
It’s a lot of work during vintage time in April - his days at Invivo can take up to 16 hours.
Yet all the work and expertise in the world would be worthless without good fruit.
‘‘Without good fruit you can’t make purse out of a cow’s ear.
‘‘Big hats off to the guys at Viticultura... for producing great fruit every year, regardless of the vintage we get great fruit..it gets quite a lot of wind up there, the fruit is quite intense from up there.’’