New star for old Otago wine region

Press release – 20 May 2010

New star for old Otago wine region

Young Alexandra winery, Grasshopper Rock, has become the rising star of Central Otago’s oldest and lowest profile winegrowing sub-region. This weeks gold medal award announced at the International Wine Challenge (IWC) in London for its 2008 vintage pinot noir makes this the most awarded wine ever produced in the Alexandra sub-region.

The IWC is the world's most prestigious and influential independent wine competition. The gold medal award brings the tally to two international gold medal awards and numerous five star awards received for the wine.
Grasshopper Rock managing director, Phil Handford says “Alexandra has been overshadowed and under rated as a premium pinot noir producer and we are determined to change that”.

Long regarded as the birth place of Otago's wine industry, the first commercial wines were produced at Clyde in the Alexandra sub-region by Jean Desire Feraud from about 1870. Feraud departed for Dunedin in 1882 and commercial winemaking went into recess.

It was not until pioneers Sue Edwards and Verdun Burgess established Black Ridge vineyard across the river from Alexandra and started producing their first wines from 1988 that Alexandra started to get noticed again as a wine producing region.

In recent years most of the vineyard development in Central Otago has been around Gibbston and Cromwell areas and it has been outstanding wines from these areas that have really put Central Otago on the international wine map, Handford says.

Against the trend Grasshopper Rock believed the best pinot noir land was in the southern most sub-region around Alexandra. “We identified a perfect vineyard site on a gentle north facing slope between Black Ridge vineyard and Alexandra in an area known as the Earnscleugh Rim. We planted vines in 2003 and set out on a mission to produce some of the best pinot noir in the world”

Handford says “These awards are the shot in the arm that Alexandra needs and we are starting to show the world that the Alexandra sub-region can produce a style of Central Otago pinot noir that is delicious, restrained and elegant”.
Something Handford thinks is related to the soils and the extreme Alexandra climate.

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