For the tasting, resident marketing guru Trish Linton teed up a brut sparkling 60/40 P.Noir/Chard sparkling, their 2010 pinot gris, and the '08 Pinot Noir. We had the privilege of sampling the wines among Quartz' stainless steel jungle of storage vats (see pic), which up till then was the closest I had been to wine production.
Read more for a breakdown of the vino and how a certain Rees Christmas tradition has been adopted in Otago.
60/40 Pinot Noir/Chardonnay Sparkling: Brut champagne is a drier version, so I was an easy sell. I will talk more about champagne production later, but we got a particularly hands-on crash course of how to make bubbly given the "dosage machine" (again, more on this later) was right in front of us in the vat room. Anyway, nothing wrong with this bubbly.
Quartz Reef Pinot Gris '10 ($26NZ): It's the only white they make; I can't see why. The metallic/sweet combo of most Pinot Gris was not lost on this version...I'm surprised this varietal wasn't chosen over Merlot to incite Paul Giamatti's bipolar rage in the film Sideways.
Quartz Reef Pinot Noir '08 ($40NZ): Best Pinot of the tour for me...not too many tannins with a very sharp/tight cherry and chocolate flavor. Quartz Reef (I don't know how many others do this as well) "cleans up" their Pinots. Which is to say post fermentation they toss some milk and egg whites into the batch, "let it soak" for a while, then scoop out the milk & egg (which I'm assuming are relatively immiscible with wine) that has gathered some of the tannins and toxins. Good on them.
As for the Rees tradition, each Christmas Mason spelunks his basement for the right double magnum to go with dinner. Once polished off, everyone present signs the behemoth and it goes back to the cave for posterity. Apparently, Quartz does something similar with its vats:
Notice: Vat with label
Notice: Label with signatures
Something to shoot for.
-Trevor
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