Careful farming and hands-off winemaking the key to Isabel Estate Pinot Noir success

Isabel Estate continues to make a stellar impression with Pinot Noir, taking out four awards with their Marlborough Pinot Noir 2021 at the 2023 Marlborough Wine Show, sponsored by QuayConnect.

As well as being crowned the QuayConnect Champion Wine of the Show, it picked up the Coterie Wine of Provenance, Wine Marlborough Ltd Champion Wine from the Wairau Valley subregion, and the De Sangosse NZ current vintage Champion Pinot Noir trophies.

Isabel Estate Chief Winemaker and Marlborough Manager, Jeremy ‘Macca’ McKenzie shared a little insight into what goes into making this champion wine, as well as some thoughts on the success of the Marlborough wine industry as it celebrates its 50 year anniversary…

Isabel Estate Marlborough Pinot Noir 2021 excelled up at the 2023 Marlborough Wine Show. What is it about this wine that makes it so special, and did you expect it to do so well?

There is nothing easy about trying to perfect the art of making quality Pinot Noir, so to receive these awards was special for us. Close planting/row spacing and organic farming have been instrumental in our quest to make better Pinot Noir.

We managed to nab the Champion Pinot Noir trophy back in 2018 for our 2017 vintage, so to receive these awards this year for the 2021 vintage is amazing. They reaffirm our focus on Pinot Noir and the fact that we have sound building blocks to produce quality Pinot Noir at Isabel Estate.

The 2021 vintage at Isabel Estate can be remembered for quality over quantity; an early vintage, dry season from the outset and frost events with poor flowering shrinking yields. However, small bunches and small berries promised to contribute to the concentration of flavour, colour development and a real vibrancy which is what we can see from this wine. The 20% whole cluster allows an attractive and alluring perfume to the wine.

Picking up both Wine of Provenance and the Champion Wairau Valley subregion wine trophies is an indicator that this wine has a sense of place. Tell us about the vineyard it's grown in and how you think it’s reflected in the wine?

We are indebted to an amazing site at Isabel Estate and the foresight our predecessors had to have planted it in a Burgundian framework some 35 - 40 years ago. It was also set up with steel posts, which was highly sustainable, and very unusual for that time.

Our Pinot Noir blocks are farmed organically or are in conversion, and this framework allows vines to show less vigour, and encourages the roots to dig deeper into the soil sphere, where there are significant amounts of clay. This soil type is also special in that it enables us to almost dry farm and improve the phenological ripeness of our blocks and individual clones.

We think the tannin profile of the wine is quite unique to the site being quite sinew and powdery-like, versus the silken tannins of the Southern Valleys which I also love. I guess we are at the confluence or cusp of the Southern and Wairau Valleys.

Another key facet of the site is that it is significantly cooler in temperature than surrounding areas, allowing hang time on the vine and good purity. We are very hands-off with our winemaking, with natural ferments and being single vineyard and estate bottled it is a true provenance story.

Everyone knows Marlborough’s status as a Sauvignon Blanc champion - how long has Isabel Estate been focusing on championing varieties other than Sauvignon Blanc and what do you think makes it a great place to produce quality Pinot Noir?

Sauvignon Blanc is still a significant driver of Isabel Estate and we love making it, however we are so lucky to have old vine stock and high quality clones of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, my most loved varieties.

There is significant history with these two varieties being shared/supplied by Isabel Estate to other wine companies back in the late 1980s and early ‘90s to top winemakers such as Hatch Kalberer (Fromm), Marcel Giesen and David Honen at Cloudy Bay to name a few.

I had tasted the wines from Isabel Estate while in previous winemaking roles; I got a chance to play with some Chardonnay during my time at Villa Maria and could see the quality of the fruit. Pinot Noir is still always a challenge but we have put a lot of work into getting the vineyard right. It is organically farmed and almost ‘dry farmed’, depending on the season. I have been working hard with Pinot Noir for close to 20 years now, harking back to the success we had with the Villa Maria single vineyard Pinot Noirs from Seddon/Taylor Pass and Southern Clays - all amazing Marlborough vineyard sites and high-quality examples of subregional Pinot Noir. To be able to continue this Pinot Noir journey with Isabel Estate keeps the fire burning!

For a fairly new wine region, Marlborough has come a long way in 50 years. What do you think has been the secret to the success of the region and where do you think we’re headed in the coming years?

The Marlborough wine industry is truly blessed with many great people and companies who work collaboratively for the greater good. We are indebted to those who took the steps in the initial days such as Montana (Pernod Ricard), Phil Rose (Rose Family Estate), Hunters, Bill Spence (Matua Wines)  and one of my former mentors, Allan Scott, who have all established vineyards, “walked and talked” the pavement across the globe singing the Marlborough story.  

The work of the bigger global companies like Moët Hennessy - Louis Vuitton with Cloudy Bay, Constellation with Kim Crawford, Treasury with Matua, Villa Maria and of course Oyster Bay have all paved the way for other companies to launch off.

The secrets have been around quality products and a price that works for the consumer/customer. We have bedded ourselves on quality and we need to uphold this and for sure every region grows commercially to get scale but we still need the stories and the “material fabric” of the industry to exist.

Wine Marlborough Ltd and the Marlborough Wine Show are key drivers of this and ensuring the benchmarks are maintained at a top-class level. We can never lose sight of this – we need the younger generation of the wine industry to strive to uphold quality, evolve with innovation, have access to mentors  - Women in Wine for example, and create an environment such as the Marlborough Wine Show to allow development. I have been lucky enough to have the astute Ben Glover critique my judging and wine quality over the years, for example.

I also believe there are still strong opportunities with other wines like Mèthode Traditionelle, Chardonnay, and it’s great to see people pushing out with Chenin Blanc and Albariño. There is still plenty of work to trend consumers and global market understanding to ensure we meet the styles and flavour profiles that people love in order to maintain the Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc phenomenon.