Clark Estate Black Birch Pinot Gris 2022

The 2022 Black Birch Pinot Gris is shy at first, almost playing hard to get, but with a little time it opens up and rewards you with a beautifully powerful aroma and invites you for a taste. This wine is full bodied, aromatic and fruitful with a creamy texture. The flavour lingers well after the first taste and the fine acidity helps cleanse the palate.

The Black Birch is a pristine alpine stream which feeds clean mountain waters into the main Awatere River. The Black Birch range also directs cooler winds down onto the vines during the autumn months, slowing the ripening process just enough to ripen the Pinot Gris fruit to perfection.

Our Pinot Gris has a delicate richness and power driven by the low cropping and fully ripened grapes hanging from the vines that have been nourished by the Blackbirch waters

Our vines are now sending their roots deep into the old soils of the Upper Awatere valley, soils which have been molded over the millennia and the vines struggle to find the nutrients they need, helping to reduce the crop naturally, giving us small but flavoursome fruit every year. The weather conditions in the Upper Awatere around harvest are usually dry and sunny, and we can pick the fruit when we want to capture the intense flavours at the best time.

The grapes were quickly pressed off the skins and fermented under very cool conditions. The ferment was stopped when the fruit sweetness complimented the fine acidity. The wine was left on full yeast lees for an extended period to mature and gain extra complexity.