The Totara tree is endowed with strength and durability, native to New Zealand, it has long been revered by the Maori, as well as early European settlers for its diverse qualities and usefulness. Totara's enthusiastic team are focused towards producing food friendly wines which express their regionality and are a textbook of varietal definition. Totara Pinot Noir is true to it's Rotorua origins, displaying a full bodied, earthy palate with layers of fruit and ripe tannins, just like the eponymous tree, solidly structured and built for longevity.

Totara employ the most adroit vinification techniques to construct wines of profound varietal and regional expression. The chilling winds of Island South serve to reduce fruit set and limit yields, temperate summers provide ideal conditions for a slow and complete ripening. Small intensely flavoured berries translate into a wine of great colour and concentrated flavour. Grapes are hand harvested and cold soaked up to five days prior to fermentations. The batches are vinified in open vats for an average of seven days, initially treated to a course of daily cap plunges, gradually increasing to three per day at peak of ferment. The completed wines are matured under a mix of tank, oak staves and French oak barrels.