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We are thrilled to bring you the first release of the Burn Cottage Sauvage Vineyard Pinot Noir, from the Bannockburn sub-region of Central Otago.
There are only small volumes of this first release and we are expecting to sell out quickly.
Secure your bottles here
We may be totally biased but we think it’s a beautiful example of Pinot Noir from what is affectionately known as the Golden Mile in Bannockburn. It has a bright, floral aroma with notes of ripe black plums, cherries, and spice. The palate is richly textured and filled with an abundance of fleshy red/black fruit flavours that are supported by an elegant core of fine juicy tannins. We believe it will happily cellar for up to a decade.
The reason for this new release is fairly simple, a few years ago we began searching for a second vineyard site to complement the Burn Cottage vineyard in Lowburn. We looked into multiple options including establishing a new vineyard in another sub-region, leasing a block, or buying an established vineyard (which can be incredibly rare in this part of the world).
After months of searching we were given the heads up about a vineyard that was coming onto the market, a Pinot Noir focussed site in Bannockburn, tucked between the MacMuir vineyard owned by Felton Road and the Mt Edward Muirkirk Vineyard. They happen to be two of our great mates and like-minded in their growing of grapes under organics and biodynamics. We fell in love with the spot and were able to negotiate the purchase during the winter of 2017.
This beautiful North East facing site on Felton Road in Bannockburn was originally named the Sluicing’s Vineyard and planted in 1999 with 5.8 ha of Pinot Noir. The site's low vigour soils are comprised of lake-bed/river silts and quartz sands, along with quartz and schist gravels, with pockets of pedogenic lime, a unique attribute of semi arid soils. Great gold country in its day and now exciting Pinot Noir growing land. After a bit of debate we decided to name this special place, the Sauvage vineyard.
Owning this new vineyard has meant that as of Vintage 2018, the Moonlight Race Pinot Noir has become 100% Estate and Biodynamically grown, with parcels of wine from the Burn Cottage Vineyard & Sauvage vineyard. It marks a truly exciting step for us, as we now have the Burn Cottage Vineyard as of vintage 2017 and the Sauvage Vineyard from 2021 accredited with Biogro Organic certification (and we are currently in the process of Biodynamic certification).
Initially, we expected to use the 2018 Vintage to simply get a feel for the style of wine that the Sauvage vineyard produced and to use it mainly for Moonlight Race. However, as many of you will know, the 2018 Vintage was Outstanding for our region. However, Claire and the winery team could see partway through harvest that the Sauvage vineyard was producing a Pinot Noir of unique character, and made a unanimous decision, that we simply had to bottle a parcel as a single-vineyard designated wine.
We are excited about our new release and look forward to sharing it with you.
Cheers and thank you for all your support.
Marquis, Dianne, and the Burn Cottage Crew
PS… on a side note we have recently secured the lease of the wonderful Luna Vineyard, which is a 2.2Ha organic certified Pinot Noir block on the corner of Bannockburn Road and Felton Road, more details to come at a later date.