SHEILD Pinot Meunier Rosé 2025

Reviews

Brand-new vintage without any review yet. The SHEILD Pinot Meunier Rosé 2023 received:

James Suckling (JamesSuckling.com): 92/100. A beautiful and fresh rosé with sliced peaches and mineral undertones. Medium body, crisp and clear at the end. Drink now and enjoy.

Cameron Douglas MS: 90/100.  Aromas and flavours of tropical fruit punch, chilled rose and raspberry tea and rose Turkish delight. Plush satin textures touch the palate first with plenty of acidity and fine tannins for contrast and mouthfeel. Fresh and lively, balanced and well made with best drinking from 2024 through end of summer 2026.

Tasting note

Pale Provençal Pink, this light bodied Rose is teeming with citrus blossom, red berries and melon aromas. A discreet lick of residual sugar accentuates the fruit flavours which are teased out through the wine by the juicy citrusy acidity. A mineral/saline note makes a nod to our coastal proximity and stretches the wine out to a long dry finish.

Varietal: 100% Pinot Meunier

Aromas and flavours:

Additional information

Food match: Best served chilled as an aperitif. Also a delightful complement to BBQ dishes and summer salads.

Vineyard: Wai-iti Vineyard, Nelson, New Zealand. Flat alluvial soils, gravel with a layer of silt loam. Vine age 13 years.

Growing Season V25: After a standard 'Global Warming Winter' of moderate temperatures and average rainfall, spring started warm and the vines loved it. Flowering was compressed and strong with fantastic fruitset leading to high quality and even bunches. Regular rainfall and not too much of it punctuated the summer and early ripening period. Grapes were picked earlyish. They were tasty, juicy and very clean. Perfect for winemaking once again.

Regional climate: Nelson’s sheltered topography gives protection from strong winds; combined with its proximity to the sea this gives milder temperatures than other South Island regions, mitigating frost risk. Regularly New Zealand’s sunniest region and with good diurnal variation this helps emphasise varietal character. High sunlight hours and a long growing season give wonderful fruit purity.

Winemaking: Proudly made from 100% Pinot Meunier, from a lovely vineyard sight that is wedged at the confluence of the Waimea and Wai-iti rivers, with the Richmond ranges as a backdrop. The fruit for this wine is always harvested in the cool of very early morning. Machine picked on the 13/03/2025, the must made the hour or so trip to the winery – contributing to the skin contact element in this wine. Once at the winery the berries were promptly crushed and transferred to the press. No additional skin contact was employed, the juice being pressed off directly. This juice was left to cold settle for several days before the well clarified juice was racked to tank for ferment. It was inoculated with a favourite Rose yeast chosen for the fermentation aromatics it liberates. The ferment was kept cool to maintain a civilized pace and preserve the pronounced aromatics. Although we are not fixated on numbers, this wine year after year seems to come into balance at a residual sugar of 6.5g/L pumping up the fruit notes but still allowing the wine to finish clean and dry on the palate. The ferment was chilled to arrest. From here it was simply and briskly moved through the finishing steps to bottling – capturing the wine's youthful finesse.

Alcohol: 11.5% vol

Residual sugar: 6.5 g/l

Total acidity: 7.0 g/l

Bottle size: 0.75l

Notice: contains sulphites, may contains traces of milk products

Cellaring potential: 2027+

Closure: Screwcap

Ingredients: Grapes, Packaging gases: Nitrogen, preservative: Potassium metabisulphite (E 224).

Produced and bottled by: Drinks Cabinet Limited, Atawhai, Nelson 7010, New Zealand