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History

We began making Nautilus wines in 1985 – the early days of Marlborough winegrowing. We are a small, family-owned winery based in the stunningly beautiful Marlborough region of New Zealand. We aim to craft delicious, food-friendly wines from the clean, cool and diverse valleys of Marlborough.

 

The striking Nautilus shell - its shape expressing natural beauty and mathematical perfection - is our inspiration to create a collection of expressive, textural, precisely crafted wines. Our energetic and innovative viticultural and winemaking team takes the approach of blending several different fruit parcels to achieve layers of complexity in the wines, focusing on their texture and mouth-feel. Our state-of-the-art but small-scale winemaking facilities give them the tools to achieve this. Whilst Nautilus wines can easily be enjoyed on their own, we believe they are even better when paired with delicious food and the philosophy of creating food-friendly wines is paramount for winemaker Clive Jones.

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Vineyards

Marlborough is a stunningly beautiful grape-growing region situated on the northeastern corner of the South Island of New Zealand at 41.3 degrees south. The region is sheltered from the prevailing westerly winds, derived from the roaring forties and from the southerly winds which funnel up from Antarctica. The region’s local climate is moderated by its proximity to the Pacific Ocean which creates a cool, maritime climate.

 

Marlborough enjoys some of the highest sunshine hours in New Zealand averaging over 2,400 hours annually. The average summer (January) temperature of 23.8°C and winter (July) average of 12.8°C belie a large diurnal temperature range: a variation of 15°C/60°F between the cool clear nights and bright sunny days is not uncommon. Daytime temperatures over the harvest period of March/April average 19°C  - 21.5 °C with a night time temperature range of  7.5°C – 10.5°C.  This diurnal temperature range is significant for the accumulation and retention of flavours. Wine Marlborough, the local winegrowers’ association, defines Marlborough as having three main sub-regions. Each sub-region has distinctive soils and climatic characteristics.

Nautilus draws grapes from specially selected sites in each sub-region in order to harness their diverse flavour components to add layers of complexity into our wines.

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Winemaking

Nautilus is unusual in effectively having two wineries side by side. The first was built in 2000 and is dedicated to the inspiring but sometimes infuriating grape that is Pinot Noir. Its construction was quite radical in Marlborough at the time (this was back before the Sideways movie made Pinot Noir’s popularity skyrocket) and we believe it was the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Using the principles of gravity flow, this facility allows us to handle Pinot Noir grapes as gently as possible in order to allow the natural intense flavours and aromas – the expression of the different vineyards – to come to the fore.

 

The harvested fruit passes through a destemmer mounted on rails directly into the tanks. This avoids using a must pump which can bruise the fruit and release bitter phenolic compounds. When one tank is filled the destemmer is positioned over the next. However we do experiment with some whole bunches in some of our parcels of pinot noir, adding extra structure and complexity to the final wine. All 16 of our open-top fermenting tanks, each able to hold eight tonnes of grapes, are fitted with both heating and cooling capacity.

 

This enables us to cold soak the grapes for five to seven days at 10-12°C to extract all the beautiful fragrance of pinot noir as well as good colour from the skins before alcoholic fermentation begins. It also allows us to warm or cool ferments as necessary. A three-head pneumatic plunger inspired by the revolutionary engineering at Willakenzie Estate in Oregon gently plunges and rolls the cap during the cold soak and fermentation, allowing us total control over the extraction of the wine. After fermentation, we use gravity to drain the young wines off the skins and transfer them to French barriques where they typically remain undisturbed in barrel until blending and bottling the following year.

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