Pinot noir is more suited to lingering over a glass and watching it unfold rather than sniffing, slurping and spitting through 50-odd wines.
However, five writers worked silently and conscientiously in the warm Mount Difficulty tasting room, sniffing, slurping and spitting 53 pinot noirs from 2007 and making notes.
At this time of year, some pinot noirs, often the reserves and top labels, are still in barrel, and were not shown.
However, in the freezing winery below, trade tasters slurped through 56, which included a few barrel samples.
And are they any good? Of course they are - this is Central.
With the caveat that many of these wines won't be released for some months, and all will develop over the next year or more, my impression of the 2007s was of lovely purity of fruit, concentrated intensity and texture, with fine-grained tannins and crisp finishes like a bright, frost Central Otago morning.
The wines were in two groups.
The first 12 were cheaper - cheap in Central Otago terms meaning under $30 - and there were some very drinkable wines here.
Those that stood out that morning were the crisp, textural Wooing Tree Beetle Juice ($28), the charming Van Asch Freefall ($30), Charcoal Gully Sally's Pinch ($28,) with lovely fruit, the intense Anthem Discover ($30), the lingering Mount Michael ($30) and the rich Wild Earth Blind Trail ($25).
In the more expensive wines many stood out: the rich, cherry, spicy Desert Heart ($38), the powerful Olssens Slapjack Creek ($62), the textural Mount Dottrell ($35), the finely textured Felton Road ($55) and the perfectly balanced Felton Road Block 3 ($80), the intense, bright Peregrine ($39), the stylish Surveyor Thomson ($40), the charming 25 Steps ($35) from the eye-catching terraced vineyard on the edge of the Sugar Loaf at Lowburn, near Cromwell, the edgy Tarras Vineyards ($38), the easy Akarua Gullies ($35) the spicy, rich Mount Maude ($32), the charming Kawarau Reserve ($43), and the lively Hawkeshead First Vines ($42).
Several new labels I had not seen before appeared in this tasting, including some from the Gibbston region: Anthem, Hawkeshead and Coal Pit.
Along the Pisa Range and Lake Dunstan I noted Te Mara and Charcoal Gully; Domain Road from Bannockburn, Tarras Vineyards from near Tarras, and Grasshopper Rock from Earnscleugh near Alexandra.
