Coldstream Hills Reserve Pinot Noir is a legacy of the winery's founder, wine writer James Halliday, although he is no longer involved in winemaking. The wine typically shows bright, dark cherry, ginger, meaty aromas and flavours, superb buoyancy of fruit, a silken texture and underlying vanillin oak. The wine finishes with a 'peacock's tail'; a long elegant and flavoursome flourish. Sourced predominantly from the dramatic north-facing 1985 planted Amphitheatre A Block and 1988 planted Ampitheatre B Block, the soils are 'unambiguously acidic' and largely ancient weathered clay loams. The estate-grown fruit is batch vinified using Burgundian techniques including pre-fermentation cold soak, vinification at warm temperatures in open stainless steel fermenters, partial whole bunch fermentation and hand plunging. This is followed by 9-11 months in new (up to 50%) and seasoned French oak barriques and puncheons.