Pinophiles Part 4: Rockburn Vineyard

Formerly the 3 hectare Hay's Lake started in 1991 as Richard Bunton's hobby, Rockburn now has 40+ hectares of vines and is the first brand we visited that exports to the states.  Contrary to the more rugged terroir of our first 3 visits, at Rockburn, it's business time.  As you can see by their cellar door paddock (located off-site...we never saw the actual vineyard), they are new school.

Our host was winemaker Malcolm Francis, pictured behind the above countertop's queue of glasses who looks like a mulleted Kip Dynamite.  Please, please visit Rockburn's team homepage for a closer picture of Francis (http://www.rockburn.co.nz/team.html), who boasts a second claim to fame as the inspiration for one of the title characters on this classic late 90's toon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinky_and_the_Brain.

We only tasted two wines:

'07 Parkburn Riesling - $20NZ, 12.5% alc: I'd recommend it; this wine wasn't that sweet and had a Pechy/Mango nose with great balance.  While most of Rockburn's wines combine grapes from both the Hayes Lake paddock and the 33 acre Parkburn plot they purchased in 1999, this is the only one made exclusively with grapes from the original plot.  Because Central Otago doesn't get cold enough (< -8 Celsius) for frozen grape harvesting (a sweetening technique), they have to employ other tactics.

'09 Pinot Noir - $45NZ, 14.4% alc: Too many tannins for me (it's young=stronger tannins...more on tannins from Robert in a bit.)  On taste, it had dark cherry and chocolate flavors...Just take it from Malcolm: pinot-noir-vid.html

Stay tuned for our final stop: Wooing Tree

-Trevor