Pinot Noir - 2016 - Helen Masters

100% Pinot Noir, from old vines farmed organically, and harvested by hand at the end of March 2016, with controlled yields. Vinification without additives: 30% whole grape bunches, 6 days cold pre-fermentation maceration, fermentation with indigenous yeasts, some punching of the cap, 26 days in vats in total before a gentle pressing. 17 months of maturation in French oak barrels, 35% of which are new.

Helen Masters is a winemaker like no other. At the head of Ata Rangi estate since 2003, Masters was named New Zealand's Winemaker of the Year in 2019 by Gourmet Traveller Wine magazine. Her achievements are remarkable, but so is the history of Ata Rangi, which began in 1980 with an act of seeming folly. That was the year Clive Paton gambled everything by selling his herd of dairy cows to buy 5 hectares of poor, stony soils near the village of Martinborough. Inspired by a scientific report showing the suitability of Martinborough soils and climate for viticulture, Paton had begun to dream of becoming an internationally recognised winemaker. As a rugby player he had often scratched his knees on the region’s rough soil, so he was intimately aware of the challenge planting and cultivating young vines there would present. But his enthusiasm was infectious, and soon Clive was joined at the estate by his sister Alison who bought an adjoining 2-ha parcel to plant what became some truly exceptional Pinot Noir. The entire estate is farmed organically, part of a commitment to the conservation of indigenous species, fauna and flora, which has included planting some 75,000 trees over the last 15 years. Today, thanks to Clive Paton's passion for his terroir and Helen Masters' precision in the winery, this family estate has become an ecological and qualitative model for the entire New Zealand wine industry.