Craggy Range Aroha Pinot Noir 2024

97 POINTS

Ken Gargett - Winepilot

From the Martinborough region in New Zealand, which makes some of the world’s best Pinot Noir, the fruit here hails from the wonderful Te Muna vineyard, which is now twenty-five years of age. The name, ‘Aroha’ is Maori for love. And it is simply impossible not to love this wine. From the brilliant 2024 vintage, fermentation was with wild yeasts. The team fermented 85% whole clusters in French oak, while the component which was from clone 114 was fermented in a combination of French oak and sandstone amphorae. Maturation was for a further fourteen months. I can’t remember a better example of this wine from any past vintage. A purple/blue hue, the nose offers a wonderful array of aromas, weaving through cherries, truffles, violets, wild raspberries, leaf litter and notes of freshly baked blackberry pie, just emerging from the oven. We are already seeing some early complexity and, no doubt, that will increase enormously over the coming years. The structure is seamless, the balance impeccable, and the concentration beautifully defined. A wine of focus and energy with great length through to satiny tannins on a lingering finish. Stunning stuff and for me the finest Aroha I can recall. A fifteen-year proposition.

95 POINTS

Tom Kline - Winepilot

Grown on a narrow band of clay over stone in the Te Muna Vineyard, from vines now over 25 years old, this blends two clones picked five days apart — Clone 667, fermented with 85% whole clusters, and Clone 114 from Prestige Block 16, part-fermented in sandstone amphora. Both were hand-picked and wild-fermented, then aged for 14 months in French oak barriques. The perfume opens with lashings of dark berries, cherry conserve, plum, blackberry, boysenberry, stemmy spice, a touch of cacao nib and white chocolate. It’s dark and brooding, but not at the expense of Pinot charm and fragrance. Some time in the glass reveals clove and forest floor, with the fruit unfurling to add vibrancy and fill out the palate. It’s sapid and dense in the mouth, with a coating of flavours mirroring the nose, all wrapped in firm, chalk-dust tannins and fresh acidity. The finish holds bitter cacao-nib tones as it carries to a very long length. This shape shifts in the glass on account of its nervous youth, but once it settles, you’re in for a ride. There’s complexity now, but also the structure, oak influence and fruit power to age in the longer term.

95 POINTS

Mike Bennie - Halliday Wine Companion

Mellow, medium–fuller weight, fine-tuned and fancy-feeling. A pinot noir of inward concentration. Dark cherry, dark plum, cola, panforte, woody spices, faint mintiness, white pepper. Lots of character here, all squished away in a compact, lengthy frame. Plenty of finesse.

95 POINTS

Gary Walsh - The Wine Front

All Dijon clone. 80% whole cluster About 18% new oak and for the first time unfined and unfiltered. Dark cherry, spice, lots of perfume, hazelnut chocolate. Medium-bodied, a smooth grain and grip to tannin, somewhat dense and chocolaty, but still has fragrance wafting through it, acidity is balanced, and it closes long. Complexity and layers here. A lovely wine.