2024 Valli The Real McCoy Orange Pinot Gris, Central Otago

This vintage of Valli’s The Real McCoy pours a stunning tangerine hue. It has engaging aromas of sweet pea flowers, tangerine, apricot and pineapple with a touch of rosemary and sage. The palate shows flavours of tangy citrus, stone fruit and subtle spice. It’s a focused and precise wine great tension between the fine tannin and lingering acidity.

The Real McCoy excels with complex dinner flavours. Try with seared Murray Cod, served with roasted maitake and a katsuobushi and black garlic dashi. If you can get fresh sweetbreads, pan-roast them and enjoy with a parsnip puree and pickled cherries.

Give the wine a good swirl in the decanter and don’t be afraid to stash a couple of bottles away; Valli’s style has shown itself to evolve nicely over many years

About this wine

The release of the 2024 vintage marks a decade of Valli skin-contact Gibbston Pinot Gris.

The five separate open-top ferments that make up the final blend had varying degrees of whole clusters, with an average of 33%. The ferments stayed 24 days on skins, and the dry wine completed full malolactic fermentation and was bottled after 12 months in five-year-old French barrels previously used for Pinot Noir.

The wine was not fined or filtered so natural sediment may occur.

About this producer

Valli is the personal journey of pioneering Central Otago winemaker Grant Taylor who has been crafting wines there since 1993. In 2015, established Otago winemaker Jen Parr joined Grant in the winery, the two aiming to create wines with honesty, integrity, and a strong sense of place.