Wine Reviews

Both elegant and powerful, with raspberry coulis and black cherry flavors, plus hints of star anise and cardamom that mingle with fresh earth, toasted green tea and chicory notes on a plush frame.

The 2024 Pinot Noir is from the Te Muna Road vineyard in Martinborough, on New Zealand’s North Island. On the nose, the wine is deeply aromatic, with spiced cherry, blood plum, new leather and star anise. In the mouth, the wine is concentrated and dense—powerful in structure and shaped by French oak—well matched but pronounced. This is a fantastic wine. Give it a couple of years prior to opening, although it certainly drinks well now!

The fruit is eminently red, and the wine feels elegantly integrated at all levels. It’s a lovely expression of Martinborough, and it manages restraint and measure at every opportunity. The acidity is fine and saline, the balance is there and the oak merely supports.

Off the back of two difficult vintages, 2024 was, thankfully, a triumph. It shows in this bottling, for while this may be the less costly of Craggy’s two top Pinots, it punches above its weight. A succulent combo of strawberry and blackberry with whispers of licorice, violets and dried herbs, there’s ripeness and generosity that the previously cool vintages struggled to achieve, with plump, mouth-filling dark fruit flavors and fine sandpapery tannins. Youthful and still quite primary, it should age nicely over the next several years.

From the stony soils of windswept Martinborough, this is a potpourri dish of black cherry, blueberry, cedar, sage, dried florals and other heady spices. It’s silky with a light, crunchy modern appeal that belies its quiet complexity.