Pinot Noir 2023

Pinot Noir 2023

Consistently rated as one of Australia’s best Pinot Noir wines; our estate Pinot Noir is always distinctive, complex, and characterful. Old vineyards, limestone soils and low yielding vines offer pure fruit, autumnal aromas, and savoury spice driven characters.

  • Viticulture
  • Winemaking
  • Tasting Note
  • Reviews

Bannockburn Pinot Noir is made from a blend of estate fruit grown on our established vineyards; the oldest vines planted in 1976 through to the more recent 2007 planting. This release includes fruit grown across Olive Tree Hill (1976), 10 Rows (1991), Stuart Block (1997), Anns Block (2004) & De La Terre (2007) vineyards. The clonal mix includes MV6, 114, 115 and 777, with various vine spacings and planting densities.

Handpicked parcels of fruit were wild fermented separately with approximately 20% whole bunch overall including a portion of carbonic maceration. After pressing the wine was racked to a combination of hogsheads and puncheons of which 20% was new oak. The wine was left undisturbed for 10 months prior to blending and bottling.

The 2023 Pinot Noir offers a very lifted and pretty aromas of fresh bright red fruits, as well as macerated fruit, spice, and seductive autumnal characters. The flavours are also vibrant, energetic and pure with vivid red and spiced fruits, moderate tannin and a refreshing finish. The mouthfeel is elegant and complex whilst retaining freshness and enjoyment.

95 points. This is excellent. Fine, tight, intricate, wild and precise at once. Not exactly sure how they do that but here it is, they have. Cherries, meat, soy, strawberries, twiggy spice, some volatility, a fine web of tannin, some beet characters, some undergrowth. So much going on within an overall impression of control. Mightily impressed. Campbell Mattinson, winefront.com.au.

Estate

Riesling 2023
Regular price $35 Sold out
Sauvignon Blanc 2023
Regular price $35
Chardonnay 2023
Regular price $75
Gamay 2023
Regular price $45 Sold out
Shiraz 2021
Regular price $45
2023 Vintage

The 2023 growing season started off cold and wet. For the first time since 2011 our dam was full, and in fact overflowed for most of October and November (rainfall for the calendar year of 2022 was 800mm). Budburst was slightly behind average timing, but crops were down significantly: the bunch counts were low in the first place, we had a mild frost in September and the wet weather finally caught up with us via downy mildew. The rain stopped at the end of December.

The overall heat accumulation was the same (1338 Growing Degree Days) as 2021, both seasons on the slightly cooler side of average but differing in that the heat for 2023 was more toward the second half of the season. Veraison occurred in February and then we picked Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Gamay, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling in March, and Shiraz and Cabernet/Merlot in the first week of April. The picking weather was pleasant and the fruit arrived at the winery in very good condition.

While quantity was down (especially in Pinot Noir) quality was good: fresh acidity, concentration, colour, tannin and steady fermentations have us looking forward to bottling, and seemingly warmer and drier seasons as El Niño returns.

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