Cuvée Aux Antipodes Pinot Noir 2022

This wine is a collaboration between Prophet’s Rock winemaker Paul Pujol and esteemed French winemaker François Millet from Chambolle-Musigny, Burgundy. Former winemaker at Comte George de Vogüé for 35 vintages, François continues to make wine in Burgundy with his family under ‘François Millet et Fils’ and with us in New Zealand. Since the first release in 2015, this wine has been sourced exclusively from the same parcel on our small Home Vineyard site up in the hills of Bendigo sub- region, Central Otago.

François Millet continues to tease out the nuances of his parcel of our Home Vineyard with the seventh vintage of Cuvée aux Antipodes. Plums, cherries and florals of rose petal and flowering thyme jump out of the glass. A palate of red and blue fruits, with a subtle savoury note continue on the palate. Incredible structure of elegant but powerful tannin and pure acidity give a wine of both approachability and longevity. A wine of incredible balance, complexity, elegance and clarity.

Cellaring: Decant for full expression in its youth and cellar with confidence for 10+ years from vintage.

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 the parcel of Pinot Noir for this wine is a single clone at the western end of the steep front face. 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.

All elements of the winemaking are directed by François who has formed a consistent approach to this parcel since 2015. 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.

A cold dry September, with a cool October and November, warming to a few 30-degree days in mid-December. The temperatures were still mixed until mid-January when we had a solid run of warm days preceded by solid rainfall in the first half of the month. There were longer hot spells in February, and even mild dry weather through March. Harvest from late March went smoothly through until late April. There was only one short rain event in mid-April.

  • Alcohol 13.5%
  • Only 11 barrels were made.
  • Harvest dates: 7 April 2021
  • Bottling date: 7 September 2022
  • The wine is bottled under Diam cork.
  • Bottle weight 565 g (unfilled).