Concentrated and elegant with red and dark fruit, spectacular baking spices combined with smoky oak and the signature integrated tannin structure, this seamless wine with its velvety texture will leave you wanting more.

The foundation of this wine is our focus on delivering low-yielding concentrated fruit that expresses our vineyard. In the winery, we employ traditional old world techniques; the grapes are handled gently and the wines are fermented using only the indigenous yeast from the vineyard.

The wines are aged in barrel for 15-18 months before being bottled unfiltered, and are cellared before release. Since the first release in 2005, the Prophet's Rock Pinot Noir has consistently been one of the best-reviewed Pinot Noirs in New Zealand.

Cellaring will reward collectors over the next 10+ years from vintage.

Winemaker's Notes:

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. The wine is bottled unfiltered under Diam cork.