Nautilus Estate Pinot Noir 2017 (6 x 750mL) Marlborough, NZ

Winemakers Notes

The 2017 Nautilus Pinot Noir is dark ruby in colour. The nose reveals lifted floral aromas, ripe wild blackberries, cherries and spices. The palate is medium bodied with good structure. Refined and balanced, this elegant wine shows good intensity and a lengthy finish.

Vintage

Prior to Christmas all the talk was about drought. Fruit set was good but would we have enough water to get through the season and what effect would this have on bunch size. Certainly the river was low. But of course Mother Nature intervened and a couple of timely rains in January during the critical phase when the berries size up meant that a crop that was looking average at best ended up above average in size. A key feature this year was lower acidity (by normal Marlborough standards), bright fruit flavours and a nice mineral texture across all the wines.

Winemaking

To make this wine, fruit from Pinot Noir clones 114, 115, 5, 667, 777 and Abel was hand harvested and de-stemmed without crushing to allow a portion of whole berries in the ferment. A small amount of whole bunch fruit was also included in some ferments (average 18% whole bunch).

The grapes were fermented with indigenous yeast in open top fermenters after a 6-8 day ‘cold soak’. Careful cap management, using our pneumatic punch down device, has resulted in extraction of only the soft ripe tannins. After pressing the wine was racked directly to a mixture of new and older French oak Barriques, where it remained undisturbed until filtration and bottling in March 2017.