Valli, Pinot Noir, Bannockburn, Central Otago 2020 (14%)

£45 New Generation Wines

Bannockburn sits at the heart of one of the wine world’s most promising Pinot locations outside Burgundy, and this dark, fragrant yet intensely fruited wine won our judges over not just for the panache of its fruit but also for its intensity, drive, structure and resonance. The blackberry and plum fruit aromas are almost brooding, and a far cry from the sometimes simple appeal of the region’s pioneer Pinots. On the palate it is deep and mouthfilling, with high-resolution focus; the acidity is neither trivial nor shrill, the tannins are soft, but carry a useful flavour print. It’s after you swallow, though, that you come to appreciate its sinew and ligament, its inner seriousness and its sheer completeness. Fine Pinot by any measure.

In 2002, after almost a decade flitting between Europe and the US selling financial software, Valli winemaker Jen Parr took her universityborn passion for wine to another level. ‘I sold or gifted all my belongings, aside from a Jancis

Robinson book and whatever I could fit in the boot of a VW Golf, and went to the southwest of France to pick grapes,’ she says.

Vintages dotted around France, South Africa, her native Oregon and Australia ensued, before she arrived and settled for good in Central Otago.

Valli was established in 1998 by New Zealander and Pinot maestro Grant Taylor. At the time, Central Otago was almost virgin territory viticulturally, so Taylor has been better placed than many to witness the emergence of myriad sub-regional identities. ‘We are aiming to express the characteristics of the sub-regions of Otago; we want the wines to be an education in the place they are grown,’ he says.

While conceding that this ethos differs little from that of his peers, Taylor is unapologetic and refreshingly pragmatic: ‘We make the best wine possible, so the story of our place is told well, then we sell it at a price that reflects the cost of production. Nothing more, nothing less – and we spend what we need to make that happen.’