All of our wines are estate grown at Bell Hill and go back to our first four vintages of Old Weka Pass Road Pinot Noir from 1999 to 2002 before our inaugural Bell Hill Pinot Noir 2003 vintage and Bell Hill Chardonnay 2004 vintage.
After a very cold winter the 2001 season saw normal timing of budburst in the first week of October. Unseasonable cooler weather followed, resulting in a frost in November that affected one third of our currently producing Quarry. The cooler influence of spring pushed flowering back a little but warm weather during flowering ensured even fruit set and early cap fall. A New Year’s Eve hailstorm resulted in minor fruit damage, which dried and healed very cleanly and a stable summer brought forward maturity, giving even ripeness and good yields when harvested.
OLD WEKA PASS ROAD PINOT NOIR 2001
The grapes are from the Quarry block at Bell Hill Vineyard, in their third year of production. The clones include 113, 114, 667, 777, and 10/5. The vines were picked on the 25th of April at 23.2 Brix, 3.54 pH and 8.15g/L TA, 2.7 tonnes were harvested. The grapes were sorted by hand before destemming and then cold soaked for seven days with pumping over and hand plunging. Cultured yeast was added after warming and the wine was pressed off at dryness after six days into French barriques with its lees, 44% new oak was used. It underwent late malolactic fermentation in January 2002 and, due to the vibrancy and fruit intensity of the wine, it spent a longer barrel ageing time of sixteen months before bottling in October 2002 with a light filtration.
