12-Jul-2017
Although Elephant Hill is based with its home vineyards in the cooler Te Awanga coastal region of Hawke’s Bay, it owns sites in the warmer inland areas of the Bridge Pa Triangle and the Gimblett Gravels to give a range of fruit options for the making of the preferred wine styles. Even so, there are some varieties that other regions do better in, and Elephant Hill recognises that Pinot Noir has an affinity with Central Otago, and the wines from there have a certain market cache. For that reason, Elephant Hill has an arrangement to source Pinot Noir fruit from the Maori Point vineyard near Tarras in Central Otago. A number of successful and stylistically complementary wines have been made this way over several vintages. The fruit is hand-picked and transported to Hawke’s Bay as whole clusters in a refrigerated truck and vinified at the Elephant Hill winery at Te Awanga. Here, I review the new 2016 Elephant Hill Central Otago Pinot Noir 2016. www.elephanthill.co.nz
