Astrolabe Comely Bank Pinot Rose Marlborough 2021 0

This bone dry, savoury and delicious Marlborough rose is clearly next level in price but then, so too is the taste of this wine. Simon Waghorn, the winemaker, gave the hand picked grapes a warm fast ferment to provide this single vineyard rose with its dry, savoury flavours, moving the taste firmly away from a tutti fruity style into refreshingly different one. Flavours here are all about slivered almonds, dried cranberries and even an earthy note on its lingering, weighty finish.

It gains depth of flavour and body from being fermented on solids (yeast lees) and was fermented to total dryness, leaving the wine with no residual sugar. 

Comelybank Vineyard Rose is a single vineyard wine made with grapes grown by Jeff and Vanessa Hammond in the Waihopai Valley.

It is 85% Pinot Noir and 15% Pinot Gris.

The story of Astrolabe

Diversity, history and family ownership are among the reasons to try the outstanding range of wines from Astrolabe, which was founded in 1996 in Marlborough by winemaker Simon Waghorn and his partner in life and wine, Jane. 

Simon has forged a reputation for being one of New Zealand’s most respected producers of aromatic white wines after winning an almost embarrassingly long string of awards for his Sauvignon Blancs. He has also forged a name for adventurously diverse winemaking – he produces dry flinty whites from the most southern vineyard in Marlborough at Kekerengu on the coast about an hour’s drive south of Blenheim. He is the only winemaker to produce wines from here. 

He is also one of the few in this country to make Albarino, Chenin Blanc and a consistently outstanding range of wines from the organically certified hillside sloping site that is the Wrekin Vineyard in Marlborough. 

The winery remains family owned and is now run by two generations, including Simon and Jane as well as their adult daughters.