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Buy OnlineWinery notes (2024 Vintage)
"Beautiful vintages like 2024 risk losing a certain hook, or friction, in the wine. By picking early we avoided this risk and were able to retain good acidity and a degree of disposition to provide interest in the wine. Dark and bright fruit are the antagonists, with Morello cherry cutting through the riper characters. This Pinot Noir goes beyond typical varietal qualities to offer an array of complex and inviting aromatics. The wine is rounded and softly cushioned, moving effortlessly over the palate, with soft tannins acting as chaperones and guiding the fruit toward each corner of the mouth.
We harvest all our fruit by hand into small tubs. The fruit is sorted the following day, cold, fully destemmed into small ferment vessels. Natural fermentation occurs, with an occasional hand plunge to help keep the ferments happy and homogenous. At around 18 – 24 days in the fermenting vessel, we pressed the wines and transferred them to large format barrels, 300 & 500 litres, for 12-18 months. The wine is racked and blended into stainless steel tanks before bottling without fining or filtration."
Reviews for the 2023 vintage below…
95/100 Jamie Goode, WineAnorak.com, August 2025 (2023 Vintage)
"This is made by Wilco Lam, previously of Dry River. The grapes come from the vineyard that Escarpment used to use for Pahi. Lovely concentration. Vivid, pure and structured with nice density to the finely spiced black cherry and plum fruit. This is serious stuff, with pure fruit but also structure."
94/100 Emma Jenkins MW, Decanter UK, August 2024 (2023 Vintage)
"Oraterra is the new venture of Wilco Lam, formerly chief winemaker at Dry River Wines. In 2022 he assembled a crack team of colleagues and backed by a family of German wine-and-NZ-lovers, purchased Martinborough winery, On Giants’ Shoulders, with a well-established dry-farmed, certified organic vineyard. The 2023 Pinot Noir launches the new brand and label, and while not the easiest year to navigate, Lam has kept a light hand and delivered an elegant, savoury, spicy wine with delicate brambly berry fruit and fine sappy tannins, that combines minerally earthiness with an energetic brightness. One to watch."
94/100 David Walker Bell, WineFolio.co.nz, May 2025 (2023 Vintage)
"A new wine from the well-established McCreanor Vineyard in Martinborough – where Wilco Lam and his team have found a new home for their Oraterra label. A deep plum-ruby colour in the glass. A fresh and inviting perfume, filled with cherry, redcurrant, damson, raspberry and rhubarb, with lovely floral highlights on the nose. Medium bodied at most, this has a youthful, vibrant entry to the palate, with a bright acidity to the fore. The pose then leans to one of savoury, earthy elements, with a toastiness from the oak and a prickle of tannin adding depth. Will benefit from cellaring, but is by no means closed, even at this stage. A fine arrival."
93/100 Gary Walsh, The Wine Front, July 2025 (2023 Vintage)
"Raspberry, strawberry, a smoky autumnal character here, rhubarb, nutmeg and pimento, a coverlet of light nutty oak. It’s light and sappy, has energy, cranberry, raspberry, some blood orange, a dusty peppery feel to tannin, with a juicy and tangy finish of good length. It’s a delicate wine, kind of marginal in a way, though it has something about it. That old chestnut about the best (Burgundy) producers making good wines in bad years rings true here."
