2004 Main Divide Selection Pinot Noir

[Skeeter]

So I'm re-stocking the shelves in the wine store I work at, right? And lo and behold, what's this? A bottle of Waipara pinot with a badly creased label! A bottle of pinot that we won't be able to get again due to the vintage selling out. Well, we can't sell our customers a bottle with a defective label, right?

And so the bankcard came out, and this one came home with me a few months back.

Fast-forward to tonight. Grilled lamb steaks with a mustard and rosemary crust should be a nice match. I attempt to crack the screw-cap...

And the whole capsule popped off instead. I'm gutted, thinking I'm the lucky owner of a bottle of Waipara vinegar.

The good news? Once I remove the inner lining of the cap, which was still attached to the bottle, there's the distinct "POP" of a seal breaking.

The wine made it through unscathed and un-oxidized. Score another one for Stelvins. [img]http://wines.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

The wine itself? Very nice indeed. Deep crimson in the glass with a rich, warm, complex nose. Aromas of dark berries and black cherries with a faint hint of aniseed/pastis characters in the background. Dense and spicy, the fruit having melded well to produce a very savory mouthful with some drying tannins still on the finish. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the rest of it overnight.

[winoweenie]

What, pray, be the price and availability of this sucker Skeets? WW

[Skeeter]

Price... around NZ$30-40 or so. (I can't remember what I paid with staff discount.) Availability? Best of luck. I think that vintage is no more. Possibly it's gettable via their web-site, http://www.maindivide.com/content/current.htm but I'm not sure if the Selection range gets exported. Not to mention their habit of not updating the website frequently enough. (It's the 2nd label from Pegasus Bay, which does have international distribution.)