2016 Rippon Vineyard Mature Vine Pinot Noir Lake Wanaka Central Otago New Zealand 750 ml

It’s a “hotbed for Pinot Noir, featuring some of the country’s top examples.” 

The landscape is unforgiving with “hard, jagged edges” and mountains that “thrust up into the sky,” while the wind “whips up the cold waters of the lakes.” 

As for the vines, they’ve “gotten serious,” and “put down roots, thickened their trunks and balanced their canopies.” 

Today, the resulting Pinot Noirs are premium bottlings, “with certain benchmark producers making wines that can stand alongside wines from anywhere in the world.”

These are the opinions of Robert Parker’s managing editor at the Wine Advocate, longtime critic Joe Czerwinski, and it’s not Burgundy or Sonoma he’s describing—the mountains and lakes give away the farm—but Central Otago in New Zealand. As far as the country’s benchmark producers go, today’s Rippon Vineyard is right at the top. Their 97-point 2016 Rippon Mature Vine Pinot Noir is proof that the apple of world-class Pinot doesn’t fall that far from the Burgundian tree of style.

It doesn’t hurt that winemaker Nick Mills spent five years working in Burgundy, including at Domaine de la Romanée Conti (DRC). It may, however, explain why James Suckling’s review just glows: “This is such profoundly complex pinot with violets, dark cherries, plums, blueberries, graphite, black tea, peppery nuances, licorice and woody spices...delivering a powerfully composed and profoundly concentrated core of blueberry and dark-cherry flavor in a layered and refined style.” 

DRC’s Aubert de Villaine surely left an indelible mark on Mills, who learned that making exceptional Pinot Noir is an art. Selling it, on the other hand, is an art form he’s happy to leave us. 

The quality-to-price-ratio on this Mature Vine Pinot is worth reflecting on. Burghounds know that locking into Premier Cru Nuits-Saint-George or Grand Cru Gevrey Chambertin for $60 is a pipe dream (especially if it comes with a 97-point review). But when it comes to style, Rippon wines deliver the same full-bodied, powerful structure with similar vigorous and velvety tannins as their top-growth Burgundian counterparts.

After all, the Mills family has worked the lands in Central Otago for 108 years. Nick’s great-grandfather purchased the property in 1912, and Nick’s father, Rolfe, was among the first to plant grapevines on European rootstock in the 1970s. Today, their estate consists of all own-rooted vines with up to 35 years of age that are farmed according to biodynamic principles. Decanter named Rippon its top producer in a list of “Six Names to Know” from Central Otago, pointing out the “Older Rippon vintages are spectacular.” The 2016 has the firm structure and complexity to live up to its legacy. 

At Rippon, the Pinot Noir grapes grown atop schist soils are dry-farmed, delivering a serious mineral edge and endowing these wines with impressive power. The grapes are hand-picked and native yeast-fermented in stainless steel before the wine is aged for a year in one-quarter new French oak, then another in entirely neutral barrels. It’s then bottled unfined and unfiltered (like all the top Burgundy producers), which makes this Mature Vine Pinot a dead-ringer for Cru Burgundy in a blind tasting. On matters of price, it’s an unbeatable value.