2004 Mt. Difficulty – Roaring Meg (New Zealand)

I picked this up at Crush on 57th St near 3rd Avenue. Crush has a great tasting program and they always have about 5 wines to taste on hand in a nice side room, the staff is extremely knowledgeable, and they specialize in small production and hard to find wines.

In my never ending quest to find the perfect value for money pinot noir, I picked this up for $18 (minus the 10% new customer rebate). Although not exactly cheap, it’s less expensive than the majority of pinots yet priced that one-rung up where you should start to be paying for a quality drink. In addition, I had been wanting to try something from Mt. Difficulty every since Wine Spectator profiled them in an issue on New Zealand pinots.

As for the wine itself, the first thing I thought of when the aromas hit my nose was “smoky”, a smell I love, although not so much in pinots. The wine was “in barrel on full lees for nine-months”. The woodsiness of the wine dominates the fruit. The fruit itself is a mix of berries but it’s hard to differentiate which ones. The wine is medium bodied with a medium long finish. Overall, it tastes like a pinot but it lacks the finesse of most, even ones in the $20 range. A decent drink but not one to give too much thought too.