Our Mt Beautiful Rosé pairs perfectly with fresh salmon, shellfish or a spicy refreshing salad.

2024 was an outstanding vintage for North Canterbury. A hotter summer than in recent years meaning that harvest was one of the earliest on record. Vintage itself was a dream with a few rain days but nothing that hindered harvest. Interestingly, whilst we had the earliest start on record for the Rosé, there was a delay by 10 days for the other varieties to come into a picking window. Veraison was mixed depending on the variety with some Blocks progressing through flowering quicker than others depending on the weather that week.

The aim of our 2024 Rosé is to align with the colour profile of the Provence style Rosé – that being a light coral pink. To achieve this, both the Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris were drained immediately upon arrival at the winery. Half of the juice was lightly pressed with the balance being free run juice only. Inoculated with an aromatic yeast and fermented at a steady 120C, the Rosé was fermented to dryness then aged on its lees for a further 4 weeks to build texture and mouthfeel. The Rosé was bottled in September 2024 to retain maximum freshness and vibrancy.

Mt Beautiful consists of a single estate vineyard set across 85Ha of undulating slopes and aspects creatingMt Beautiful consists of a single estate vineyard set across 85Ha of undulating slopes and aspects creatinga unique tapestry of flavours. Both the Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris are planted on the Southern section ofthe vineyard. This has the highest elevation and produces extra heat accumulation and less frost risk. The Pinot Noir is closely planted to reduce vigour and enable lower per vine yields enabling the fruit to achieve the physiological ripeness we were looking for in our Rosé. The Pinot Noir blocks were chosen based on three of Mt Beautiful’s oldest (Block M, N and X) that are planted with a mixture of clones (115,5, 6, Mariafeld, Abel) and combined with one of our young vine blocks planted with 115, 667, 5, Abel,10/5, 777, 943. What this offers in the Rosé is a wonderful medley of clones and a true vineyard blend.Each clone offers something different – fruit flavour, spiciness, savoury notes and acdity. 

Pinot Noir (99.5%)
Planted 2004-2019
Blocks used: M, N,V and P2
Spacing: @2.0 m x 1.0 m
5,000 vines per hectare
Average yield of 4.28 T/ha (1.73 T/ac)

The Pinot Gris planted on a North facing slope consists of the Berrysmith, Orvaille and GN 2-21 clones giving slight differences in their flavour profiles and were harvested at the same time as the Pinot Noir as the key to this blend is the co-fermentation of both varieties providing complementary roles of aromatics and phenolic mouthfeel to the wine.

Pinot Gris (0.5%)
Planted 2005-2006
Block used: O
Spacing: @2.4 m x 1.5 m
2,777 vines per hectare
Yield: 6.41 T/ha (2.59 T/ac)

Analysis at Bottling
Alcohol 13.6%
TA 6.8 g/L
RS 1.0 g/L
pH 3.22

Bottled: 11 September 2024

Production: 999 cases