Sophora Pinot Noir 2023

This flagship wine showcases our Kopuwai Delta Vineyard in the Pisa sub-region, Central Otago. This beautiful site overlooks the powerful Clutha River and provides a wonderful contrast to our two Bendigo Vineyards.

95 points.
Aromas of dark cherries, wild raspberries, orange peel and lead pencil. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins and vivid acidity, giving notes of blackberries, blood oranges, dried herbs and crushed river-stones. Balanced and bright with a real purity and a mineral edge. The premier release of this new addition to Prophet’s Rock pinots. Drink or hold.

JamesSuckling.com

A beautifully expressive nose of bramble fruits, wild strawberries, mountain herbs and violets. The palate continues with raspberries, blueberries and boysenberries, with silky, fine-grained tannins and a pure line of acidity, pulling it all through to a long and elegant finish. An ethereal Pinot Noir, showing the clarity of the vineyard in the bottle.

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

This wine showcases our Kopuwai Delta Vineyard in the Pisa sub-region, Central Otago. This beautiful vineyard sits on a high terrace directly overlooking the Clutha River, at the delta where it runs into Lake Dunstan. Protected by towering mountains on both sides of the valley, this warm site has been shaped by the passage of multiple glaciers. Kopuwai Delta is situated at a narrow point in the valley between the Pisa and Bendigo ranges and lies at 225m elevation. The low vigour, free-draining, very fine schist-based soils feature loess, alluvium, quartz and rounded river stones.

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 11 months in barrel (20% new) and undergoes indigenous malolactic fermentation.

We had a mild finish to winter and a stable spring with no frost in the region after the first week of October when the vines were barely getting underway. There was regular small rainfall through November which gave the vines energy for flowering and fruit set in December when the weather was both warmer and dry. January and February were warm and very dry until late February when the weather cooled thanks to a rain event that fell as snow on the mountains. 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.

  • Alcohol 12.5%
  • Only 10 barrels were made.
  • Harvest dates: 23 March – 4 April 2023
  • Bottling date: 12 March 2024
  • The wine is bottled under Diam cork.
  • Bottle weight 565 g (unfilled).