I had this last night with LrNw.

The Mt Difficulty Vineyard is based in the Banockburn region in Central Otago, the world's most southerly wine producing region. Technically it sits outside the traditional longitudal (sp?) enviroment for growing grapes (the equivilent of Edinborough in the UK) but due to the Pacific oceans proximity the region is relatively temperate.

Mt Difficulty is a union of orginally five vineyards which specialise in Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, and Riesling. Each vineayrd has an inidividual name. Each vineyard is owned by an individual owner- so in truth it is really a co-operative. In 2000 the largest of the five separated to form Carrick Vineayrds.

Mt Diificulty (named because of the infamous southern Alp of the same name) vineyards are highly sort after wines, verging on cult statis. The single vineyard releases are more so.

The Manson's vineyard produces a single vineyard Pinot Gris and the Single Vineyard Chard. This is the first vintage of the Chardonnay. The production is limited to less than one hundred cases.

The soils of the Manson vineyard are north eastern facing (as good as it gets) with stony soils dominating.

Colour: Beautiful golden notes
Nose: Elegant stonefruit with soft butterscotchy notes that didn't dominate the fruit but rather interggrated with it.
Palate: Beautiful silky texture dominated by length and an elegant finish.
Overall: Very good wine (equivilant of $17 USD) scores 89 on the Jeremy scale..