Central Otago and New Zealand Pinot Noir

Everything about Central Otago is an exception to New Zealand. It sits inland behind the Southern Alps, so it’s dry rather than maritime. It has hot days and genuinely cold nights, a swing of 20 degrees or more. It’s at roughly 45°S, among the southernmost commercial vineyards in the world. And it grows almost exclusively Pinot Noir.

Pinot Noir is thin skinned, disease prone and desperately sensitive to where it’s planted: two neighbouring vineyards will give noticeably different wine. It needs a long cool ripening season without the damp that would rot it. Central Otago’s dry continental air supplies exactly that, and the big swing between day and night temperatures means the fruit accumulates sugar and aroma in the day and locks in acid overnight.

The resulting style is distinct from Burgundy rather than derivative of it: darker fruited, more overtly ripe, higher in alcohol, and with a thyme and wild herb note locals call the "Central" character. Where good Burgundy is often about restraint and savour, good Central Otago is about intensity and clarity.

• Bannockburn - the warmest and most concentrated. Dense, structured, dark fruited Pinot. Felton Road is here.
• Gibbston - the coolest and highest, near Queenstown. Lighter, more floral, higher acid, and the last to ripen.
• Bendigo - north facing schist slopes, very warm by local standards. Powerful and ripe.
• Wanaka and Alexandra - the outer edges. Alexandra is the driest and coldest, giving tight, high acid, red fruited wines.

The unifying soil is schist, a hard glittering metamorphic rock, often with wind blown loess - a fine pale silt - over it. Water runs straight through it, which is part of why you can’t grow grapes here without irrigation in a way it’s nowhere else in New Zealand.

Martinborough, at the southern tip of the North Island, was making serious Pinot Noir before Central Otago existed as a wine region. It’s small, gravelly, and its wines are more savoury and structured - closer to Burgundy in temperament than Central’s are. Ata Rangi and Dry River established the reputation in the 1980s.

North Canterbury brings limestone into the picture, which nowhere else in New Zealand Pinot country really has, and produces wines with a distinctly mineral, savoury edge. Marlborough makes the lightest and most red fruited, much of it excellent value.