Home Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024
Deep profound ruby in colour. The very complex nose takes time to open and shows a range of florals from peony rose to violets, cherries, and boysenberries, with anise and cedar notes mixed with black tea leaves.
The palate is warm, open, and deep, with violets and anise joined by blood orange, juicy boysenberry, and red cherry. The spices and chalky mouthfeel typical of this site carry though to a very long and textured finish. There is a lot to unpack with this wine and it is worth decanting in advance and spending time with.
This wine pairs well with duck, venison, and lamb.
2023 97 Points, James Suckling
A gorgeous pinot, this shows pure and focused strawberries and dark berries as well as lavender and sandalwood. Flint too. Medium-bodied with ultrafine tannins and a long, racy finish. It’s sleek and curated. Terrific. So drinkable now but will age beautifully.
2022 94+ Points, The Wine Advocate
The 2022 Home Vineyard Pinot Noir is possessed of a most exciting display of red fruits and ductile tannin in concert. There’s pomegranate, red and black cherry, licorice, star anise and even a hint of cumin seed. It’s a wonderful wine that I know from experience benefits from a decant.
2021 97 Points, Bob Campbell MW
Fragrant, dense wine with cassis, blackcurrant, dark chocolate and nutty oak flavours. Impressive, attention-grabbing wine that envelopes the senses. Clearly from a favourable vintage and with obvious cellaring potential.
2020 96 Points, Bob Campbell MW
Silken, intense pinot noir with concentrated cassis/blackcurrant, vanilla. dark chocolate and spicy oak flavours. Bright, elegant wine that is approachable now but shows obvious cellaring potential.
2019 96 Points, Bob Campbell MW
Deep, dark pinot noir with cassis, dark cherry/berry, red-fleshed plum, liquorice, smoky oak and mixed spice/anise flavours. Prophet’s Rock’s signature low-extraction winemaking has produced an accessible wine supported by ripe tannins that suggest good ageing potential. Terrific wine!
2018 96 Points, Huon Hooke
Medium to full ruby colour with traces of purple and brick-red. The bouquet is reserved and metallic with ironstone and dried-blood nuances, dark plum emerging with airing, and very complex. The wine is full-bodied and savoury, with drying tannins, fleshiness and terrific depth of flavour. Serious concentration and appetising savouriness. A pinot with structure: the tannins are typical of the Bendigo subregion.
2017 96 Points, James Suckling
This is a scintillatingly rich expression of pinot noir that offers such intense, ripe red and dark cherries, as well as crushed violets, stones, meaty nuances and spicy aromas. The palate has a very juicy and rich feel with a sleek, fresh finish. So concentrated and seamless. Drink or hold.
2016 96 Points, James Suckling
This is very good. The rich and attractive, fresh red cherries and plums sing in the glass. It delivers a very vibrant impression with blood oranges and pomegranate in the mix, too. Smooth tannins carry long and seamless, drenched in ripe red-cherry and pithy pink-grapefruit flavors. Super long and rippling with energetic fruit, this is a beautiful young pinot. Drink or hold.
2015 94 Points, James Suckling
A different shape to this wine. There’s a more savory edge to the aromas and flavors initially. Then, a core of bright, pristine and spicy red-cherry flavor emanates from the center of the palate. Fresh and sustained finish. Great pinot that will age nicely. Drink or hold.
2014 93 Points, Cameron Douglas, MS
An elegant and charming bouquet of light savoury moments, wild flowers and red berry fruits, a layer of newer oak and related wood spices add depth and complexity. On the palate – fleshy, dry, fruity and tense with youthful yet fine and silky tannins, medium+ acidity and layers of wood spice and brown toasty spice especially vanilla and clove. Lengthy finish, balanced and well made.
2013 94 Points, The Wine Advocate
The most perfumed Prophet’s Rock Pinot I can recall, the 2013 Home Vineyard Pinot Noir features rose-like florals on the nose, followed by layers of rich, ripe fruit. Black cherry, cinnamon and allspice mark the medium to full-bodied palate, leading into a long, silky-textured finish. Mature now, it should hold at this level for another 6-7 years.
2012 96 Points, 5 stars, Bob Campbell MW
Lovely Pinot Noir with an appealing, perfumed aroma of ripe cherry, plum and a suggestion of violets (thyme?). Lovely structure, with an emphasis on fruit rather than savoury characters. Very elegant wine indeed.
2011 93 Points, Jamie Goode
Juicy, bright and fresh with nice structure under the sweet, pure cherry and plum fruit. Nice warm spicy undertones. There’s a silky elegance here, finishing bright and spicy.
2010 94 Points, Jamie Goode
A high terrace at 400 m. This vineyard has a lens of chalk, which is actually pedogenic lime, with minerals in the rain accumulated in the soil by evaporation. Ripe and fresh with lovely supple cherry fruit. Quite an elegant style: supple and alive, showing finesse and a lightness of touch.
2009 ★★★★★ Michael Cooper
The 2009 vintage was estate-grown at Bendigo, in the Cromwell Basin, hand-picked, fermented with indigenous yeasts, and matured for 18 months in French oak barriques (35 per cent new.) Ruby hued, it is sweet-fruited and supple, with moderately concentrated cherry and spice flavours, showing good, savoury complexity, and a deliciously soft texture. Drink now or cellar.
2007 92 Points, Tom Cannavan
Lovely cedary complexity, masses of fruit and a little more finess than the 2006. Balanced and deliciously moreish on the palate, the fruit has a much more sinewy, elegantly muscular character and lovely length.” .
2006 93 Points, Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW
Medium to deep ruby colour. Profound nose of violets, moss, cooked beets and dark chocolate covered cherries. The palate is elegant, crisp and complex with a minerally, savoury character supported by a medium level of finely grained tannins. Very long finish.
2005 95 Points, Bob Campbell MW
Elegant and powerful Pinot Noir that delivers its array of cherry, plum and spice flavours with great subtlety. Very attractive wine indeed – one of the best from the vintage.
Since the first release in 2005, this wine has been sourced exclusively from our small Home Vineyard site up in the hills of Bendigo sub-region, Central Otago.
The vineyard sits on a high elevation (320 – 390m), steep glacial terrace high above the valley floor. The site features some of the oldest vineyard soils in the valley with the formation of the terrace occurring approximately 650K years ago. The soil age and dry Central Otago climate have combined to create the unusual clay and pedogenic lime soil structure. Beneath layers of clay at a depth of 50-80cm sits a thick layer of chalk. The 7.5ha site was prepared and planted between 1999-2001 and features 7 clones of Pinot Noir and 0.5ha of Pinot Gris. Full organic certification (Biogro) was completed prior to the 2018 vintage.
A strong focus on viticulture is the foundation of the winemaking approach. Yields are consistently managed to 30-35hl/ha or approximately 4ton/ha.
The handpicked fruit is destemmed and fermented using only indigenous ‘wild’ yeast. A key feature of our vinification is extremely low extraction, all our small open top tanks are only hand-plunged once during fermentation. The wine then spends 17 months in barrel (35% new) and undergoes indigenous malolactic fermentation.
Mild finish to winter, stable spring with no frost. Regular rainfall through November, fruit set in December when the weather was warm and dry. January and February were warm and very dry until late February when the weather cooled. March was mild but not hot, with only five days reaching 25°C early in the month. From the middle of March until the end of harvest in April, the weather remained stable allowing us the flexibility to pick on flavour and ripeness. The grapes held good acidity, and the resulting wines have a great balance of freshness along with ripe flavours and good structure.
- Alcohol 13.5%
- Only 33 barrels were made.
- Harvest dates: 2-9 April 2024
- Bottling date: 12 November 2025
- The wine is bottled under Diam cork.
- Bottle weight 545 g (unfilled).