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Our vines are 15 years old this year - here is your feedback

Grasshopper Rock's vines are now 15 years old and we have good reason to celebrate. The vines have achieved a stage of maturity where the roots have fully colonized the available space and the trunks are now thick and strong with greater resilience, delivering richness and complexity of flavour and character. We have perhaps not yet seen the greatest wines from this vineyard. To mark the 15 years  we invited our customers to help celebrate with some feedback. We wer...

2018 vintage

Summary.  An interesting and very successful season. 2017/18 was our most extreme season yet. Serious frosts in the weeks before budburst followed by unprecedented heat mid-season and finishing with a -5° C frost in mid-April. Not every year thanks! One of the hottest Central Otago summers on record. The heat, early flowering and ripening and rain in February created more challenges than normal. Despite the challenges the fruit was picked in excellent condition with full flavour developme...

2006 - 2016 tasting by Raymond Chan

A vertical tasting of back vintages has provided an interesting and important insight into how well Grasshopper Rock Pinot Noir ages.  In November 2017, Raymond Chan and his partner, Sue Davies, visited Grasshopper Rock with . We drove from Queenstown and had time for a good catch up before having look around the vineyard and then tasting through all vintages of Grasshopper Rock since the first in 2006. Raymond had  visited four years earlier so this visit provided the opportunity to r...

Pinot Celebration 2018

The Central Otago Pinot Noir Celebration is the most anticipated event on the wine calendar and each year the event goes from strength to strength. The Celebration is held in late January every year with a break every fourth year for the national pinot event. International interest in the Celebration continues to grow due to the consistently excellent Pinot Noir being produced and the appealing format of the event. Wine quality is only getting better as the vines age and as winegrowers become mo...

2014 Block 6 Grasshopper Rock Pinot Noir

This wine comes from a special part of our Earnscleugh Vineyard. With vines now over ten years old the grapes in this part of the vineyard consistently show a distinctive character which we decided to capture in 2014. The soils here are the lightest in the vineyard being sandy silty loams over sandy gravels. Pedogenic lime is common in parts. The vines are planted at high density (6,000 vines/ha). The grapes in block 6 are always some of the last to be picked in the vineyard. Harvest 22 April 20...

Awards and reviews - 2015 Grasshopper Rock

Reviews Bob Campbell MW - 95/100Aromatic with juicy cherry, plum, mineral and spice flavours. A backbone of fine, ripe tannins perfectly supports subtle fruit. Elegant, supple wine with cellaring potential. Aug 2017  The Wine Advocate #228 –Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW 90+/100 Medium garnet-purple in color, the 2015 Earnscleugh Vineyard Pinot Noir gives fragrant notes of crushed red and black cherries, red currants and wild thyme with a hint of violets. Medium-bodied, it has a great core of ex...

2017 vintage

2017 was the coolest vintage for at least 15 years. The unusually warm September was followed by a good October and then a period of below average temperatures through until late February. Fortunately flowering was good but the cooler weather during berry development meant bunch sizes were below average. 90 gram average bunch weight which is the lowest since 2007 and 2010 vintages. Picking started on 8 April which was surprisingly early. 2017 season seems to have favoured Alexandra which ripene...

Awards and reviews - 2014 Grasshopper Rock

Awards GOLD – International Wine Challenge 2016 (London) GOLD - Sydney International Wine Competition 5 STARS - Michael Cooper's NZ Wine Buyer's Guide 2016 5 STARS - Bob Campbell MW, The Real Review SILVER – Decanter World Wine Awards 2016 SILVER – Hong Kong International Wine & Spirit Competition 2015 SILVER – Royal Easter Show Wine Awards Reviews Michael Cooper – Michael Cooper's Wine Buyer's Guide to NZ Wines - FIVE STARS The more robust and concentrated 2014 (5 stars) wa...

Bob Campbell MW visits Grasshopper Rock

Bob Campbell MW spoke highly about the classy Grasshopper Rock Pinot Noir 2014 on Newstalk ZB recently and emphasised what great value the wine is. Bob Campbell also spoke about his visit to Central Otago. We have uploaded the audio here. ...

One love - Michael Cooper, NZ Listener

A single focus on one site, one grape and one wine is rare in New Zealand....

The world's southernmost vineyard

Grasshopper Rock is one of the southernmost vineyards in the world and is situated at 45.25 degree south latitude. We have always claimed that there are no vineyards any further south in the world and have found no evidence to suggest otherwise. At the International Cool Climate Wine Symposium (ICCWS) held in England in May 2016, global warming and its impact on grape growing was discussed and it was claimed grapes were being grown further south than Alexandra, Central Otago at Sarmiento in Pat...

2016 Vintage Season

Summary: The strong El Nino produced more cool south and southwest weather than normal in the spring and early summer. Fortunately the weather was fine during flowering and fruit set was good. The cool spring meant bunches were a little smaller than recent years, which is not a bad thing. In February the heat really picked up producing our hottest February ever and was just what was needed to keep the season on track. March and April were ideal for ripening grapes. The quality of fruit picked ...

Top 30 Buys - DECANTER, December 2015

New Zealand Pinot Noir 2014 This vintage is set to trump the excellent 2013, offering more complexity, depth and promise, and the same lush, pure fruit, structure and balance. In his report Cameron Douglas MS gives the low-down on the regions and recommends his top 30 buys including Grasshopper Rock 2014. You can download the full DECANTER report below ...

Grasshopper Rock flies high with Emirates

An Alexandra basin vineyard is believed to have made the biggest wine sale ever recorded in Central Otago to an international airline. PAM JONES reports. A record breaking wine sale by Earnscleugh vineyard Grasshopper Rock will put new eyes on Central Otago's wine industry and create valuable opportunities for the district, wine industry leaders say. Grasshopper Rock has announced the sale of a quarter of its 2013 pinot noir vintage — 14,400 bottles — to Emirates airline. The wine will be ...

Historic vineyard site

The first vines at Grasshopper Rock were most likely planted before 1870 making them some of the first vines planted in Central Otago. Those vines are now long gone however in 2003 vines were replanted making this one of the oldest vineyard sites in Central Otago to still be growing grapes. Here we explore the 150 year history of the site.Prior to the discovery of gold in 1862, the land was part of the very large Earnscleugh Station then held by runholders, Strode and Fraser. The Dunstan, as the...

Cool spring ahead for vintage 2016?

There is a high probability of a cool spring and lower yielding vintage in Central Otago this year. The challenge will be to achieve good yields on the vines but there is no reason for the vintage not to be of outstanding quality. Expect a colder than average spring, especially October to December, followed by a warmer than average January through April period. In total the heat summation is likely to be below average. Already we are seeing a strong negative Southern Oscillation Index (SOI)...

Central Otago production stable

Central Otago's total vineyard area and production has stabilised at of around 2,000 hectares with Pinot Noir production being 77% of the total tonnage. Wine production from Central Otago cannot significantly increase until at least 2020 because of the lag time between planting and wine reaching the market. For Pinot Noir grape production, the time between planting and harvest is three to five years and then another one to two years before the wine is ready for release to consumers. The total l...

2015 NZ Pinot Noir harvest down 29%

2015 Pinot Noir tonnages are down based on New Zealand Winegrowers statistics. Overall Pinot Noir is down 29% but some regions have been affected worse than this by the cool spring of 2014. Total Pinot Noir production is down from 36,499 T to 25,763 T. With Marlborough accounting for around 50% of NZ Pinot Noir production it is not surprising its 31% drop is a large factor in the national drop of 29%. Central Otago escaped relatively unscathed from the cool spring with Pinot Noir producti...

Awards and reviews - past vintages

Click on the vintage for past awards and reviews of Grasshopper Rock Pinot Noir:2018, 2017, 2016,  2015,  2014,  2013,  2012,  2011,  2010,  2009...

Should I cellar Grasshopper Rock?

Should I cellar Grasshopper Rock? Yes. Typically wine critics who have tasted earlier vintages of Grasshopper Rock assess the best drinking period as being from now to ten years after vintage date. For example the 2013 vintage is best drunk from now until 2023. This does assume reasonable cellar conditions. For example this recent review of Grasshopper Rock Pinot Noir 2013 by Sam Kim, Wine Orbit: Continuing their refined style, the 2013 offering delivers excellent depth of flavour and rich...

Awards and reviews - 2013 Grasshopper Rock

Awards GOLD MEDAL – Decanter World Wine Awards 2015 BLUE-GOLD MEDAL - Sydney International Wine Competition 2015 SILVER MEDAL – International Wine Challenge 2015 SILVER MEDAL – Air New Zealand Wine Awards 2014 Joelle Thomson – TOP 20 Pinot at Central Otago Pinot Noir new release tasting Sep 2014 Best Buy - 4.5 Stars - Cuisine Magazine, May 2015 Reviews Decanter World Wine Awards 2015 Fine, pretty nose; pure and ripe, blessed with layers of toasty oak, raspberry, strawberry and just a...

2015 Vintage Season

The 2015 vintage season has again produced some excellent fruit in good quantity. The season started cooler than normal with October and November temperatures below average and a number of frosts requiring frost fighting. The cool conditions slowed flower development. December warmed up and provided a small but perfect window for the critical flowering period. While the weather at flowering was ideal, the cool spring conditions had meant some flowers proved infertile or set weak berries which di...

UK Decanter names Grasshopper Rock in Top 20 Pinots

Influential UK Decanter Magazine has named Grasshopper Rock 2012 one of New Zealand's Top 20 Pinots. Written by Bob Campbell MW the September 2014 feature highlights the stylistic differences between each of the country's five main regions, and the key estates and wines to watch including Grasshopper Rock. Of his Top 20 Kiwi Pinots, he stated "I selected every New Zealand Pinot Noir I'd reviewed in the past 18 months (271), sorted them by score and price within...

Grasshopper Rock's ongoing gold success

This week Grasshopper Rock received yet another gold for its Pinot noir bringing the total to 18 golds. The last time I wrote about medal tallies was in 2010 when I wrote a blog titled: “Grasshopper Rock’s thoughts on wine competitions”.I said “Our mission has been to consistently produce quality Pinot Noir. This has driven our site selection, vineyard management and winemaking. Wine competitions have been the best public measure that consistent quality is b...

Our winemaking philosophy

To understand our winemaking philosophy is to understand where we come from. We are five families all with a passion for farming and growing things. Our ethos is you do something and do it well.  In 2001 we made a bold decision to embark on a project to grow some of the best Pinot noir in the world. As farmers we knew that meant finding the land which would become our anchor, not any land, but exceptional land which enjoys relative immunity to seasonal conditions not shared by les...