In late March we had the pleasure of hosting Erin Larkin, part of the Robert Parker Wine Advocate team. During her visit we did an 18-wine vertical tasting of the Rockburn Pinot Noir, with vintages from the current 2023 back to 2006. It's a rare opportunity to directly compare this many vintages side by side, getting to experience the difference time and each growing season can make.
If you have any of these vintages in your own cellar, or are curious about how the Rockburn Pinot Noir changes and develops as it bottle ages- read on!
2023 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 93 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2038
I'm not in the habit of re-reviewing wines so soon after having first reviewed them; however, an 18-wine vertical does offer insights that tasting a single vintage on its own does not. What I have learned today is that the 2023 Pinot Noir ages gracefully and slowly over time and that the young vintages don't offer the same level of kaleidoscopic complexity as the older vintages do. So, this 2023 has tenacity and poise, balance and freshness, and most importantly the tannins tether the fruit and acidity to very clear racks across the palate. Chalky, pliable and fine, this is a delicious wine that will become infinitely more complex as it ages. Go slowly.
2022 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 90+ points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2037
The 2022 Pinot Noir is pretty today, and it certainly does look a little more simple than its counterparts. I ask Malcolm what this is about, and he laughs and tells me that he thinks he might have built it too tightly; then he says, “Halfway through the bottle it starts to open up. Knowing how these wines age, I am inclined to go with him on this point; however, the wine is a little more difficult to unpack than other vintages of it tasted alongside. Could it be in form and shape similar to 2014? Perhaps. Structurally, the tannins are there, and the balance of fruit and acid is there as well. The word for this wine is pretty, and while I am sure it will age well, I would be drinking this vintage in the meantime; its clarity and freshness today are very attractive.
2021 Rockurn Pinot Noir - 94 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2039
The 2021 Pinot Noir is commensurate with what I know of the 2021 vintage: it has great energy and detail, eminent drinkability and a supple fruit profile. The tannins are very fine and curve through the fruit, the acidity trailing just tucked in behind. It’s a lovely wine and likely to age so well, given the 18 vintages I am looking at alongside it. The season was coo., and the harvest saw some frost during it- fortunately, in vineyards that had been picked – but nevertheless, the picture is drawn. I like the wine a lot. It has matured in style over the decades and this is a great example of where it has come it.
2020 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 92 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2020 vintage represents COVID-19 in all countries around the world, and it was a unique time in all of our lives for different reasons. The 2020 Pinot Noir came from a cool vintage with some challenges brought o by temperatures dropping so low that the ripening didn’t conclude in some blocks. As it turns out, one solitary Pinot Noir from the 2020 harvest made logistics a little easier to manage. This wine is fresh, mineral and vibrant, with strawberry and cherry, pomegranate pearls and a sprinkling of ground pink peppercorns. It’s lovely, light and detailed.
2019 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 93+ points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2039
The 2019 Pinot Noir is pure and fine, detailed and lithe, with a profusion on mineral tannin on the palate that supports the fruit with invisible hands. I like this wine a lot, although the fruit has not yet started to open up from the protective skeleton of tannins that hold it. With flavours of cassis, black cherry, pressed garden rose, licorice, violets, red apple, this is drinking beautifully, now but given the privilege of an 18-wine vertical, I can confirm that it will develop an impressive array of complex spice as it ages. Your call; it will be beautiful both ways.
2018 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 91 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2033
The 2018 vintage was the hottest year of the century so far. The 2018 Pinot Noir fruit was picked a month earlier than normal. The fruit here is ripe and full, with gentle nuances of goji berry, vanilla biscuit and clove. Despite the descriptors, the wine is fresh and vibrant still, although it will likely be a slightly earlier- drinking wine than some of its cool-vintage siblings.
2017 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 94 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2042
The 2017 Pinot Noir is chalky and fine. I like the balance here; the wine feels delicate and long, spiced and elegant. I love the spectrum that it resides in; medium-bodied (but on the big side) and with supple tannin that defines the palate from the front through the end of the finish. This is super.
2016 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 92 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2036
The 2016 is supple and plush, with loads of red berries and chalky tannins on the palate. This is sleek and still opening up, confirming my feeling that 10 years from harvest is when we start to see the wines truly open up. It’s fresh today.
2015 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 94 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2015 is fine and savory, and at 10 years from harvest, it represents the window through which we are able to see where the wine came from but also where it is going. The clarity with which this expresses its age is impressive; the wine is teetering on the brink of primary but has a foot in the tertiary as well. This is very good.
2014 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 92 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2034
The 2014 Pinot Noir is supple and pure on the palate, with fine tannins wrapped around a core of sweet fruit. This vintage is not as complex as the 2013 tasted alongside it (I am starting to really like 2013 Central Otago Pinot Noir, just for the record), but its straightforward beauty is its greatest asset. This is nicely done.
2013 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 94 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2038
The 2013 Pinot Noir is from a cool year, and the wine (according to commentary from several other estates in the region) has taken a long while to come around. Today, the wine is 12 years from harvest, and it is pure and almost glacial in its slow outlay of flavours and mineral spices. This is balanced and beautiful, lithe and looking eminently fresh. If you’ve got some of this floating around, then I would highly recommend that you begin to start looking at it.
2012 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 91 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2037
The 2012 Pinot Noir hails from a warmer year, and this is evident in the rounded fruit profile and plush bed of tannin in the mouth. While it is possessed of the same register of brown cooking spices and woodsy tannin, the size and shape of the wine contracts and expands across the vintages, depending on many things, but mostly, as I see it, due to the seasonal conditions and all the things that that impacts.
2011 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 93 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2036
The 2011 Pinot Noir is fine and spicy. I find this to be a common thread throughout the cooler vintages in this tasting. Flavors include autumn leaves, pomegranate molasses and layers of anise and aniseed alongside licorice and cocoa. Despite the brown notes, these are not meaty wines. The percentage of new oak is a little higher in these older wines – around 35%, as opposed to around 20% in the more recent vintages.
2010 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 91 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2010 Pinot Noir is abundant and fleshy, with ample fruit and tannin that co-reside on the palate. The tannins here feel quire pronounced, as opposed to the cool seamlessness of the 2009 tasted prior, and yet I enjoy the eloquence of this wine for the season that birthed it.
2009 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 93 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2038
The 2009 Pinot Noir is balanced and fine. The register of brown baking spice, berries and tapenade coalesce on the palate, held together by tannins that feel, at this point (16 years from harvest), to be fine and ductile. This is lovely.
2008 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 91 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2008 Pinot Noir “was a helluva curveball,” says Malcolm Rees-Francis. There was a lot of fruit in New Zealand in 2008, high yields the likes of which had never been seen before. There were a lot of bunches and at big weights, a fascinating environmental situation. In the glass, the wine is elegant to spite it, and it’s layered with potpourri, mustard seed, raspberry seed, anise and dark chocolate. This is a beautiful wine. I like it a lot. It has high alcohol (14.5%) but the wine doesn’t feel it. It’s full, perhaps, but not desiccated nor alcoholic.
2007 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 91 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2007 Pinot Noir lead with an eminently restrained nose of pomegranate molasses, star anise and layers of cocoa/aniseed/brick dust. The acidity remains unperturbed by time and feels woven into all aspects of the fruit. While this wine is evolving, it is doing so in an elegant direction. There’s plenty of time to go.
2006 Rockburn Pinot Noir - 90 points
Drink Date: 2025 - 2036
This vertical tasting at Rockburn covers 2006 – 2023, everything that winemaker Malcolm Rees-Francis has been involved with at Rockburn. The 2006 Pinot Noir leads with autumn leaves and cocoa, layers of hung deli meat, star anise and clove. Texturally, the wine is soft and fully integrated in all ways. It has a plump feel to it, although time has smoothed its edges into something quite elegant.
