Central Dozen
An annual selection representing Central Otago Pinot Noir.
About the Central Dozen
The Central Dozen is a yearly selection of twelve Pinot Noir chosen to represent Central Otago.
Each set of wines offers a clear snapshot of a single vintage, shaped by season, site, and the people behind it.
How it's selected
The Central Dozen is selected through a structured blind tasting led by Emma Jenkins MW, supported by experienced local winemakers.
Across the blind tasting, wines are assessed and narrowed through multiple rounds before the final twelve are selected.
The process is rigorous, but the aim is not simply to identify the most obvious or highly polished wines. Instead, the focus is on finding wines that reflect the essence of the season. Each vintage brings its own conditions and challenges, and the selection seeks to capture how those have shaped the wines.
All wines must meet core quality benchmarks (balance, intensity, length, complexity and overall drinkability). From there, the final twelve are chosen not just on individual merit, but on how they work together as a collection. What emerges is a cross-section of Central Otago. Established producers sit alongside newer voices, spanning a range of vineyard sites, scales, and approaches.
The result is a selection that offers a clear and grounded sense of each vintage, and an ongoing view of how Central Otago Pinot Noir continues to evolve.
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2024 Central Dozen
The Central Dozen has been fortunate to showcase three excellent consecutive seasons, each with distinct personalities. If 2022 brought plush generosity and ease, and 2023 demanded patience and resilience before rewarding it with precision and complexity, 2024 arrived as something different again - and for many wine growers, something even more pleasurable.
The culmination of an overall dry, broadly classic growing season shaped by waning El Niño weather patterns, 2024 produced fruit of excellent concentration and detail. It required some vigilance along the way – wind was a persistent feature, water stress required careful management, and a significant late October frost left its mark on several subregions. Yet for those who responded well to the season’s demands, the results are remarkable - wines that are composed, elegant and deeply fruited, built for the long haul yet already showing a silky accessibility. Producers were enthusiastic: “More of this, please!” said one, whilst another reflected, “Really, it was a dream year.”
2023 Central Dozen
If 2022 was a vintage of generosity and ease, 2023 delivered one that built complexity and character. This was a season of shifting gears and sharpened focus: a cool, damp spring set up healthy canopies and decent fruit set, followed by a swift acceleration into a hot dry summer that pushed ripening and seemed likely to usher in a compressed harvest. Then the season flipped again, with timely late February and March rains cooling things down, rebalancing vines and extending ripening windows, though for some, hands were forced by the arrival of autumn frosts. Taken together, it was a growing season that demanded attention and resilience, yet for those attuned to their sites and practices, 2023 has rewarded their labours with wines of wonderful detail, great energy and depth. The longer ripening times delivered complexity, and there is a strong sense of place in the wines. “It’s a vintage that doesn’t shout,” observed one winemaker. “It reveals itself slowly, but with quiet intensity.”
2022 Central Dozen
For a region with such dramatic geography and subject to frequent weather extremes, Central Otago’s 2022 vintage paints a picture of remarkable consistency amidst benign growing conditions. It was a year that allowed viticulturists and winemakers to make planned picking decisions rather than having their hands forced by incoming weather, and a year that allowed vineyards across all subregions to shine. As one winemaker put it, ”The lack of climatic challenges provided vignerons with a rare opportunity to focus on fine-tuning vineyard practices and ensuring that grapes were harvested at peak ripeness and flavour development, producing world-class wines under conditions of stability and equilibrium.” Overall, 2022 was a gift for winegrowers and wine drinkers.