The Reserve Pinot Noir is Te Mania’s premier red wine produced in seasons where fruit quality achieves an exceptional standard.  The Reserve wine is made in a richer and more complex style than the standard Pinot Noir.  Pinot Noir is one of the most difficult and expensive wines to make well, but is one of the most rewarding displaying a wide range of flavours and aromas. 

Tasting: Spicy sweet cherry aromas combining with a delicate violet herbal and note and chary oak. The palate shows rich black cherry, red currants and plum fruit characters backed by fine fruit tannins and spicy oak.  A smooth, well-structured Pinot Noir with a long lingering complex finish that will continue to develop over several years cellaring.

Wine Making: Intensive viticulture, including bunch thinning and hand leaf plucking, ensured maximum exposure of the grapes to the sun and encouraged optimum ripeness and flavour development within the grapes.  Selected rows of Pinot Noir clones 115, 777, 667, 5 and Abel were managed in the vineyard to produce a low yielding crop of 1.6 tones per acre.  At the winery the grapes were destemmed and crushed then transferred to small open top fermenters.  After maceration for a week, ferment commenced with indigenous yeasts.  Traditional hand plunging of the cap was carried out throughout the ferment, and after 14 to 21 days post-ferment maceration, the wine was transferred to French oak barrels for 12 months.  The wine was left in barrel to naturally go through full malolactic fermentation in the spring as the temperature rose.  It was then blended, filtered and bottled in the following year.

Diet:  Suitable for a vegan diet.

Certified Organic: Asure Quality.

Analysis: Alcohol 14 %, Acidity 5.8 g/L