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The Hermit Ram, “Whole Bunch” Pinot Noir
We have enthusiastically carved out a spot for New Zealand Pinot Noir in our repertoire. These wines are simply too good—and their places of origin too stunningly beautiful—to ignore, and most important of all, they speak with their own voice.
For me, the best of them fall on the Pinot Noir spectrum somewhere between the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the Côte de Nuits in Burgundy: There’s plenty of luminous, ripe fruit but also that critical mineral underpinning that lends the wines real dimension. And as we’ve learned, it’s not just the celebrated Central Otago region drawing the world’s attention to New Zealand, but also North Canterbury—another ‘South Island’ terroir and the home of today’s wine—and others. New Zealand is a bona fide Pinot Noir juggernaut, and today’s wine from Theo Coles, creator of The Hermit Ram, is a case in point. Offering up a stylistic hat-tip to the Old World by way of ‘whole-cluster’ fermentation—and saying so right there on the label—Coles captured lightning in a bottle with today’s 2016. As we all know, lots of ‘New World’ Pinot Noir is derailed by excesses of sweetness and weight; this one, by contrast, is purely Old School class. It jumps from the glass, dances across the palate, and reminds us—not that we needed reminding—of how critical aroma is to one’s overall perception of taste. There’s nothing else in wine like the perfume of Pinot Noir—a fact this bottle hammers home in delectable (and affordable!) fashion.
For me, the best of them fall on the Pinot Noir spectrum somewhere between the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the Côte de Nuits in Burgundy: There’s plenty of luminous, ripe fruit but also that critical mineral underpinning that lends the wines real dimension. And as we’ve learned, it’s not just the celebrated Central Otago region drawing the world’s attention to New Zealand, but also North Canterbury—another ‘South Island’ terroir and the home of today’s wine—and others. New Zealand is a bona fide Pinot Noir juggernaut, and today’s wine from Theo Coles, creator of The Hermit Ram, is a case in point. Offering up a stylistic hat-tip to the Old World by way of ‘whole-cluster’ fermentation—and saying so right there on the label—Coles captured lightning in a bottle with today’s 2016. As we all know, lots of ‘New World’ Pinot Noir is derailed by excesses of sweetness and weight; this one, by contrast, is purely Old School class. It jumps from the glass, dances across the palate, and reminds us—not that we needed reminding—of how critical aroma is to one’s overall perception of taste. There’s nothing else in wine like the perfume of Pinot Noir—a fact this bottle hammers home in delectable (and affordable!) fashion.
As I’ve noted in previous offers, the South Island of New Zealand world renown for Pinot Noir and Riesling (with Chardonnay fast on the rise as well). Canterbury/North Canterbury and Central Otago are cool, high, alluvial plains that enjoy protection from prevailing winds due to the rain shadow effect of the Southern Alps—akin to the Vosges Mountain Range’s influence on Alsace, France (just west of Canterbury lies the stretch of the Southern Alps that served as the Misty Mountains in the “Lord of the Rings” films). North Canterbury, which is well north of Central Otago, is where Coles found the kinds of soils he preferred for growing Pinot Noir—namely clay with significant bands of limestone (sound familiar?) in the Waipara Valley sub-region, about an hour’s drive north of Christchurch.
Coles strives to work naturally from start to finish, from the farming of the grapes through to his work in the cellar, where only indigenous yeasts are used in fermentations and sulfur is added in minimal quantities only at bottling. The biggest mark of distinction for today’s wine is, of course, Coles’ use of 75% whole clusters, or “whole bunches,” during fermentation: While at one time throwing intact grape bunches into a fermentation vessel was standard practice for everyone, winemaking in the modern era has skewed heavily toward de-stemmed fruit. And yet the pendulum would seem to be swinging back in the other direction, especially as the climate warms; among the many things whole-cluster fermentation seems to do is help preserve freshness, point up aromatics, and even slightly mitigate alcohol content in wine (for a deep-dive on the whole-cluster topic, check out this excellent article on the subject).
There’s a great vivacity to this wine—a mix of tangy, just-picked fruit and woodsy spice—that I’m inclined to attribute to whole-cluster fermentation. Coles ages his Pinots in well-used oak ‘hogsheads,’ so there’s really no oak component to speak of other than a delicate hint of baking spice. In the glass, this 2016 is a vibrant ruby-red in the glass with garnet and pink reflections, with aromas of wild strawberry, red currant, crushed black cherry, violets, rose hips, black tea, and forest floor. It’s a medium-bodied, mouthwatering style and is bottled under screwcap, so a brief, rough decant is recommended to introduce some oxygen to the wine—it will bring out the aromatics and soften the texture. Serve this at 60-65 degrees in Burgundy stems with a wide variety of dishes—it has the finesse and savor for salmon or other seafood but would also be great with pork, chicken, even beef. For all its perfectly ripe fruit, it never slides too far into sweetness, making it a great food wine in general. So, make some room for New Zealand Pinot in your rotation: I’m certain you’ll be as impressed as we were!
