Carrick The Magnetic Bannockburn Pinot Noir 2020 $65 
Intensely juicy, gamey, spice-saturated and lifted, this buoyant beauty is crammed with cocoa notes blueberry, red cherry and rhubarb flavours in every cranny. With gently lithe, lovely tannins, if you’re looking for purity and a ‘sense of place’ in one sip, you’ve got it right here. According to the Carrick kids, the ‘Magnetic’ is named after a particularly lucrative Kawarau River gold dredge, and it’s a “single block, single variety and single clone” wine. The clone is the mythically named Abel’ or ‘Gumboot’ clone* and the Carrick crew planted a teensy amount of it back in 2008. So very little of this wine is produced and it’s available pretty much exclusively via their cellar door and wine club.
Released June 2023
*said to be a cutting smuggled into the country by a young rugby player from an uber-famous Burgundian estate and subsequently confiscated at Customs by one Malcolm Abel. Moonlighting as a winemaker in his spare time, Abel a customs officer saw the potential in the cutting and decided to propagate the clone. It is now widespread in New Zealand.
