Dry River Pinot Noir (Organic) 2018 - Martinborough, New Zealand

96/100 The Wine Front (2015 vintage)
95/100 Bob Campbell (2015 vintage)
94/100 Jamie Goode (2015 vintage)
94/100 Joe Czerwinski, Wine Advocate (2015 vintage)
93/100 James Suckling (2015 vintage)
90/100 CellarTracker (2015 vintage)
Raymond Chan 5 Stars (2015 vintage)
99/100 - Bob Campbell (2013 Vintage)
98/100 - Sam Kim (2013 Vintage)
19+/20 - Raymond Chan (2013 Vintage)

Gary Walsh - "Gee this is very good. It’s dense, throaty and deep in tannin and flavour, but not heavy or clumsy. Dark cherry, layered with sweet spice and dried herb, an almost ferrous thing going on, which you could call ‘minerally’, if you’d like, rich grainy tannin, cool blood orange acidity, and a very long finish, spiced and pimped up with a delicious Chinotto bitterness. Superb. A wine of charisma, integrity and intrigue. Hard not to fall in love with it."

James Suckling - "Super dark fruits, super ripe and super-concentrated, this is pinot noir taken to several extremes all at once. The nose is in the ripe dark plum, graphite, plum pudding and spiced panforte zone. The palate has a very strong core of tannins of unquestionable power but which have pastry-like, ripe smooth edges. The dark plum fruits run deep. Super concentrated and slightly sinewy, this wears the scars of a low-yielding and dry vintage."

Bob Campbell - "Intense pinot noir, but rather more elegant than the blockbuster styles I expect from Dry River. Quite tight and youthful with dark berry, Black Doris plum, spice, anise and a generous oak influence."

Joe Czerwinski, Wine Advocate - "The 2015 Pinot Noir comes from a year that saw reduced crop yields and dry summer. The result is a concentrated, tannic, age-worthy wine that was aged in 20%-25% new French oak hogsheads. It's medium to full-bodied and velvety in texture, with black cherry notes that come dangerously close to being chocolaty, but it retains a sense of freshness on the long, rich finish."

Raymond Chan - "...This is a rich, vibrantly fruited Pinot Noir with dark-red berry and complex herb and whole cluster flavours and violet florals on a lively, firmly extracted palate."

Dry River is one of New Zealand’s most iconic pioneering wineries, established in 1979 by Dr Neil and Dawn McCallum considered amongst New Zealand's best vignerons. The combination of low yields, non-irrigated vines, organic vineyard techniques and a desire to make long-lived wines are at the forefront of this esteemed winery.

Decanter "Dry River is Martinborough's first vineyard, planted in 1979, has been owned by Julian Robertson, the man behind New Zealand's most exclusive golf resorts. The viticulture and viniculture here are different from their neighbours on the Puruatanga Road: they practise extreme leaf plucking in the vineyard, no post-fermentation maceration in the winery, and no racking in the barrel. The aim is for gentle, phenolic extraction and long-lived wine - and it seems to work."

Wine Enthusiasts Magazine "With his small, youthful team, Lam now makes ultra-premium Pinot, among other wines, from three estate-grown, organically farmed and unirrigated plots: Dry River Estate, Craighall Vineyards and Lovat Vineyard. Each site imparts specific characteristics to the wines while still maintaining a distinctive winery style. Through exacting viticulture and winemaking techniques, the team crafts small-batch, precise wines that may be slow to evolve, and perhaps even a little austere when young, but will morph into elegant and refined beauties with 10 years or more in the cellar."

Martinborough is a wine-producing area in the southern part of New Zealand's North Island. The small town and surrounding district are home to around 1,500 residents and some of New Zealand's most highly respected boutique wineries. Martinborough's cool climate and excellent soils are perfect for the production of balanced, elegant wines made from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Martinborough lies around 55km north-east of Wellington in a wide river valley between the Rimutaka mountain range and the eastern Wairarapa hills. Despite the fact that Martinborough has only three per cent of all of New Zealand's vineyard land, it is still widely considered to be one of the country's prime wine regions. Its claim to fame is the exceptional quality of its Pinot Noir wines, produced by some of the most highly regarded wineries in New Zealand. The style of this wine is regarded to be more complex than its counterparts from Central Otago.

Pinot Noir is the dominant red wine grape of Burgundy, now produced in wine regions all over the world, including western Germany, northern Italy, Chile, South Africa, Australia and, perhaps most notably, California, Oregon and New Zealand.

The essence of Pinot Noir wine is its aroma of strawberry and cherry (fresh red cherries in lighter wines and stewed black cherries in weightier examples), underpinned in the most complex examples by hints of the forest floor. Well-built Pinot Noirs, particularly from warmer harvests, also exhibits notes of leather and violets, sometimes approaching the flavour spectrum of Syrah.