to celebrate Pinot Noir is to celebrate Central Otago.

From 30th January to 1st February 2020, we’ll be nose-deep in the Central Otago Pinot Noir Celebration.

You can’t taste a Central Otago Pinot Noir without picturing the stunning landscape that it comes from and it’s the land that comes first. It’s the birth place of all our efforts, Nature and us - the grower and the maker of wine. Although this land, the very spot where we planted our vines, was first made famous for something other than fruit.

Gold.

The gold rush that shapes the Central Otago story started off in earnest around the 1850’s - 1860’s. It brought with it local shops, banks, hotels and pubs. Blacksmiths, tradesmen, entrepreneurs and thieves came too. Stories and legends, songs and poems abound. Triumph and tragedy in equal measure.

Fitting then that as part of the Central Otago Pinot Noir Celebration, we’ll be sharing a little of this history of the place where the gold miners of yesteryear rested their sharpened their spades and filled their flagons as we gather at the Cardrona Hotel for the Garden Party on the Saturday night.

Established in 1863, the Cardrona Hotel is one of New Zealand’s oldest hotels, and is one of only two remaining buildings from the Cardrona Valley gold rush era. In it's hey-day Cardrona was a prosperous settlement and significant commercial hub for the area. During this period the hotel - one of four in the township - offered accommodation, livery services and an accommodation stop for itinerant travellers. The historic hotel facade is representative of this now vanished town and is an important part of New Zealand’s history.

Come and join us there — as we celebrate the new gold — a glass of Central Otago Pinot Noir in one hand and perhaps the ghosts of the gold-miners drinking a dram beside us.

Either way, Central Otago Pinot Noir is a spiritual experience!

——

"At a place where a kind of road crossed on a shallow bar I shovelled away about two and a half feet of gravel, arrived at a beautiful soft slate and saw the gold shining like the stars in Orion on a dark frosty night".

— Miner Gabriel Read, on the first serious gold strike on 20 May 1861.

Register to come along to the Central Otago Pinot Noir Celebration here.