Dry and warm New Zealand summer unsatisfied sheep-men, but for vine-growers the conditions were ideal, stated the director of New Zealand Winegrowers Philipp Gregar: “The fall is coming, it is still warm during the day but the nights are cool. Our forecast is that the vintage will be outstanding in all the wine-making regions of the country”, - he said. The optimism of Mr. Gregar is shared by the most of wine-makers. “Our grape ripens ideally under the blue sky. And cool night let our grape to keep acidity and life-strength which is rare in a dry season”, - confessed Gordon Russel, wine-maker of the household Esk Valley, calling this year “the best vintage of his life”. «It's hard to give a final characteristic to the year as the weather can change before harvesting. But we look forward to a perfect vintage, so to describe it we should prepare a lot of superlative adjectives”, - more carefully commented Matt Stafford, the chief wine-maker of Craggy Range. It's clear that the sector is raising in the country, the latest 6th edition of "The Great New Zealand Pinot Noir Classification" of Matthew Jukes & Tyson Stelzer includes the biggest quantity of producers — 120 from 484 of households of the country, making wines from Pinot Noir. 23 of them are included to the classification for the 1st time and 5 received the highest notes of 5 stars. “We have never seen such a grow of quality of New Zealand Pinot Noir of all price levels as we see this year”, - commented Jukes and Stelzer. Source – www.vinum.ru