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Church Road 2008 Hawkes Bay Pinot Gris
 Church
road is New Zealand’s third oldest working winery, and is still
producing quality wines. Situated in the Hawkes Bay, they aim to
produce textural and complex wines marrying ripe fruit flavours of
the Hawkes Bay with the nuances of their traditional winemaking
techniques.
This doesn’t mean that they are not innovative however, using their
curve label to find styles they should aim towards in future.
Therefore wines like this one featuring the Church Road label are
made to a tried and proven style even if it differs from the
original style made by Church Road. Having said that, this is only
the third vintage of Pinot Gris that Church Road has produced, so
they are still on a learning curve. As they have been learning more,
their Pinot Gris has become more aromatic and also slightly sweeter.
The 2008 growing season provided warm, dry late summer and autumn
weather, ensuring that the Pinot Gris fruit was at optimal ripeness
and in perfect condition when harvested. This led to wines with ripe
flavour, good texture and good concentration.
Once harvested, the fruit was transported to the winery as quickly
as possible. Skin contact was also kept to a minimum to avoid harsh
extraction of phenolics. The juice was only slightly settled over
night without the aid of settling enzymes, because of the Church
Road winemaker’s belief that cloudy juice promotes texture and
minerality. The juice was then racked to another tank and inoculated
with selected yeast strains.
Fermentation temperature was kept at 14 degrees Celsius to preserve
fruit aroma while providing better depth of flavour and texture than
cold fermentation. Already you can see that the Church Road
winemaker, Chris Scott puts a lot of emphasis on texture of his
Pinot Gris.
Once fermentation was completed, the wine was left in the tank on
yeast lees, with regular stirring for around three months. This
added another textural component to the wine. Approximately 30
percent of the wine was also allowed to undergo malolactic
fermentation to produce a more textural palate.
The resulting Pinot Gris has aromas of pear, blossoms and spice. The
palate is slightly sweet and I found it to be slightly reminiscent
of apricots. As we would expect, it has good texture, and the palate
is soft, elegant and fresh.
Pinot Gris is possibly the most versatile wine, being able to stand
up to a wide variety of food types, but I would particularly
recommend this wine with Thai dishes like green curry, or peanut
sauce where the slight sweetness in the wine will compliment the
slight sweetness of the food. This wine is drinking well now, but I
would expect the 2008 Church Road Pinot Gris to develop more honeyed
aromatics and flavour over the next two to three years.
Reviewed by Stephen Clark (16/2/2009)
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