Intense, expressive, and fruit-driven, the Pinot Noir grape has found a home in New Zealand, and this International Pinot Noir Day is the perfect time to celebrate this notoriously fickle grape.
Wind the clock back 20 years and Pinot Noir was barely known, let alone grown in New Zealand, but today there are plenty of reasons to celebrate the variety and on 18 August you can do just that.
New Zealand Pinot Noir is predominantly grown in the cooler regions of Wairarapa, Marlborough, Nelson, North Canterbury, and Central Otago. The huge diversity in these climates and soils enables a wide range of styles, however common to all is structure and elegance, overlaid by power and fruit-driven intensity. Still considered the new kid on the block due to its rapid rise to fame, New Zealand Pinot Noir is now the country’s top red wine variety, and the second-most exported wine after Sauvignon Blanc.
Did you know?
Back in the 1970s, allegedly a New Zealand traveller returning from France (rumoured to be a rugby player, no less) tried to smuggle a Pinot Noir cutting from the renowned Domaine de la Romanée-Conti vineyards in Burgundy into New Zealand! The plant was intercepted at Auckland airport customs by Malcolm Abel, a local winemaker who happened to be working as a customs officer.
He realised what this grapevine was and sent it to the government’s viticultural research centre to be processed properly. Eventually the first cuttings were released, and Abel planted them. His vineyard no longer exists but Abel’s cuttings have been shared far and wide, and the Abel clone is the foundation of many of New Zealand’s premium Pinot Noir today.
So, how will you be celebrating International Pinot Noir Day?
For plenty of Pinot Noir facts, what’s on, and International Pinot Noir Day promotional toolkit, visit nzwine.com
