Oyster Bay Marlborough Pinot Noir 2018
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James
Suckling
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
The philosophy of Oyster Bay is to produce fine, distinctively regional wines that are elegant and assertive with glorious fruit flavors. Oyster Bay Marlborough Pinot Noir is elegant, cool climate Pinot Noir at its best – sublime, stylish, and silky-smooth. Aromatic cherry, bright red berry, and juicy black plum, with a lingering, smooth, and seductive texture.
Oyster Bay Marlborough Pinot Noir is ideal as an aperitif or perfectly matched with red meats, ribs and game, grilled salmon, tuna and game fish, Asian flavors, smoky flavors such as bacon, fruit sauces and rich jus, and soft and hard cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This wine has a pretty nose with some strawberries and cranberries. Floral and toffee notes, too. Medium-bodied with a vibrant sour-cherry character on the palate. Light tannins. Tangy acidity. Clean and refreshing finish.
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Blessed with the natural advantages of New Zealand’s maritime cool climate and ancient alluvial soils, Oyster Bay continues to capture the essence of New Zealand’s cool climate viticulture with our world-class range of elegant and assertive wines with glorious fruit flavors. Oyster Bay vines flourish in Marlborough, one of New Zealand’s most renowned wine regions. Oyster Bay’s state-of-the-art, winemaking facilities, have been carefully designed to preserve the intense varietal flavors which come from these unique sites.
Oyster Bay is a passion. It’s a vision. And ultimately, it’s a promise- to bring the very best of New Zealand wine to the world.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
An icon and leading region of New Zealand's distinctive style of Sauvignon blanc, Marlborough has a unique terroir, making it ideal for high quality grape production (of many varieties). Despite some common generalizations, which could be fairly justified given that Marlborough is responsible for 90% of New Zealand's Sauvignon blanc production, the wines from this region are actually anything but homogenous. At the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, the vineyards of Marlborough benefit from well-draining, stony soils, a dry, sunny climate and wide temperature fluctuations between day and night, a phenomenon that supports a perfect balance between berry ripeness and acidity.
The region’s king variety, Sauvignon blanc, is beloved for its pungent, aromatic character with notes of exotic tropical fruit, freshly cut grass and green bell pepper along with a refreshing streak of stony minerality. These wines are made in a wide range of styles, and winemakers take advantage of various clones, vineyard sites, fermentation styles, lees-stirring and aging regimens to differentiate their bottlings, one from one another.
Also produced successfully here are fruit-forward Pinot noirs (especially where soils are clay-rich), elegant Riesling, Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer.