Travel Diaries - Central Otago with Sarah O'Dwyer

Kia ora, Precinct Sommelier Sarah O'Dwyer here, sharing our recent escapade through Central Otago — the region behind our ESCA x Nanny Goat Pinot Noir. Joining me on this trip was Jule Mouawad from ELUJ, our video production partner, capturing every step for what would become the story behind the second vintage of our collaboration.

We touched down in Queenstown and made the drive out to Wanaka via the Gibbston Valley Highway, watching the landscape shift from lake to golden, wind-carved hills — the kind of rugged beauty that had, up until then, only existed for us as a tasting note. Base camp for the trip was Oakridge Resort, a short drive from the vines that would fill the next three days.

We arrived at Nanny Goat Vineyard in the late afternoon to welcome platters, wine in hand, and our first proper introduction to Alan Peters-Oswald — the winemaker whose instincts would go on to shape this year's blend. Alan doesn't talk in numbers. While most winemakers chase sugar ripeness, Alan waits until the stems taste sweet, not bitter — his way of listening to the vine rather than the spec sheet. Standing in the vineyard as the light dropped, watching him roll a stem between his fingers before handing it to me to taste, it was easy to understand why. A relaxed dinner at the Nanny Goat cellar door, catered by The Stoaker Room, closed out day one.

Day two started slow — coffee at Fed Deli, the kind of unhurried morning Central Otago seems built for — before we set out across the full spread of Nanny Goat's sites: Loop Road, Chinaman's Ridge, Legend Terrace, and Vela Vineyard, each one telling a slightly different version of the same story. Pinot Noir is a demanding grape. Thin-skinned, temperamental, fragile — one mistake and you lose it. But here, the wild swings between blazing days and freezing nights are exactly what give it balance, brightness, and complexity.

The afternoon brought the part of the trip I'd been looking forward to most — the Pinot Noir blending exercise at the cellar door. Sitting with beakers, glasses, and Alan's notebook of vineyard notes, we worked through the three sites that make up this year's wine: Vela for perfume, Bendigo for earthiness, structure, and oak-depth, and their home vineyard of Queensberry, which drives the fruit and pulls the whole blend into harmony. It's one thing to taste a finished wine and pull out its notes — vanilla, graphite, wild raspberry, redcurrant, bramble, something savoury and earthy underneath. It's another thing entirely to build it, glass by glass, and watch those three sites argue their way into agreement. We toasted the day with dinner at Muttonbird, plates arriving just as the light properly disappeared over Wanaka.

By the third morning, there was just enough time for Alan's stems and Central Otago's dust to properly work their way into everything we owned, one last coffee, a wander through Arrowtown, before the flight home to Sydney.

This is the second year Nanny Goat and Aalia Wine Room have made a wine together, and this trip made clear why we keep coming back. It's not a collaboration for the sake of a label — it's Alan's instinct, this land's extremes, and a genuine curiosity about what happens when you let two places speak to each other through a glass. The 2025 ESCA x Nanny Goat Pinot Noir is the result — and it's pouring now across select ESCA venues.

Cheers from Central Otago — see you at the Wine Room.

S.