2024 Nga Waka Pinot Noir, Martinborough

Complex, ripe and fruity, pure fruited and enticing with scents and flavours of dark raspberry and black cherry skin. Flavours of red clay and stone, even a touch of sandy clay frame flavours of red berries and plum, clove and vanilla layers from some smoky wood then violet and wild flowers. Taut and dry with a backbone of acidity, a youthful wine with tension and power, ripe red berry fruits and lengthy youthful finish. Best drinking from 2028 through 2036+.

94 points Cam Douglas MS

This wine is a blend of three estate parcels of Pinot Noir fermented with a 10% inclusion of whole bunches and matured for fourteen months in French Barriques of which 27% were new. Rich and succulent, its silky tannins frame a palate of dark fruit and spice.

Nga Waka is a family-owned wine producer established in the late-1980s. Located in the Martinborough region of New Zealand’s North Island, its name references Nga Waka A Kupe, the three hills that dominate the landscape and in Māori legend are the canoes of the famous Polynesian explorer Kupe, carried inland by an earthquake.

Matt Harper leads the work in Nga Waka’s seven vineyard sites, his work continued in the winery by wine maker Paul Mason. The sites are in the immediate vicinity of the village of Martinborough and accredited by Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand.