Pinot Gris Marlborough 2023 – Tinpot Hut

To produce the Pinot Gris Marlborough Tinpot Hut, the fruit was quickly transported to the winery for immediate pressing, with minimal skin contact to avoid juice deterioration. Once settled, the clear juice was cool fermented in stainless steel using an aromatic yeast to bring out the delicate flavours, and to retain the fresh fruit characteristics and underlying spicy notes. The parcels were then blended and prepared for bottling.

Fruit grown on Fiona’s own 16.5 hectare Turner Home Block Vineyard was blended with fruit from the neighbouring McKee vineyard in the Blind River sub-region of the Awatere Valley, and select parcels from the Wairau Valley. Each vineyard was carefully monitored during ripening so it could be harvested at optimum maturity in cool conditions.

Tinpot Hut wines are made primarily from fruit grown on winemaker Fiona Turner’s vineyard in Blind River. Fiona, who has worked with Matt Thomson for a number of years, supplements her own grapes with fruit from other growers in Marlborough and Hawkes Bay. The tinpot hut that gave its name to Fiona’s wines is an old mustering hut in the remote hills between the Wairau and Awatere Valleys. The huts were used as a base for musterers as they rounded up the sheep that had been in the hills from spring to autumn. The name links Marlborough’s past as a sheep farming centre with its current state as one of the world’s most dynamic wine regions.