Olearia Pinot Noir 2024

Pale cherry to ruby toned, and bright in colour. The constantly evolving aromatics show brambly red fruits including raspberry, with rose and subtle violet florals, underpinned by some mocha and wet slate.

On the palate, there is a real presence and personality from this steep, schist-based site – a drive and energy that highlights and adds to the fruit profile on the nose. The bright raspberry and red fruit notes are joined by juicy black peach, mandarin citrus, and more spices. There is a linear, ethereal structure that takes you through to the graphite mineral, almost saline finish, very long with lingering roses and red fruits.

The energy and structure of this wine makes it a great match with tuna, lamb, and game.

This wine has been sourced exclusively from the highest elevation parcels on our Rocky Point Vineyard, located in the hills of Bendigo sub-region, Central Otago.

Perched at the rugged southern end of Bendigo, the Rocky Point Vineyard has some of the steepest planted blocks in Central Otago. The site rises from 226 metres to 351 metres, walking through the vines one feels the land drop away very sharply to the blue waters of Lake Dunstan below.
The metamorphic parent material of Central Otago forms the soil here, schist rock in varying degrees of decomposition – from solid slabs to pockets of fine clay. The site has very low vigour and small yields are the norm. Despite low organic matter, the soils have high mineral content so the small vines seldom show any deficiency.

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 13.0%
  • Only 24 barrels were made.
  • Harvest dates: 18 March – 9 April 2024
  • Bottling date: 12 November 2025
  • The wine is bottled under Diam cork.
  • Bottle weight 545 g (unfilled).