Cellar Favorite: 1998 Mountford Pinot Noir

BY NEAL MARTIN | OCTOBER 12, 2026

CP Lin was the most remarkable man I ever met in the wine industry. The Taiwan-born New Zealand émigré could be arrogant and obnoxious. He did not suffer fools and often finished evenings worse for wear. He was hilarious, generous, mischievous and, without fail, the life of the party. He also oversaw some of New Zealand’s finest Pinot Noirs during his 16-year tenure at Mountford in Waipara, initially under the ownership of Michael and Buffy Eaton. The story goes that Lin once correctly identified the exact cigar Eaton was smoking, then, during a subsequent visit to the winery, bluntly told Eaton that his wine was “crap” and offered to improve it. Eaton gave Lin the job as winemaker, and Lin delivered.

I have not yet mentioned that Lin was completely blind. As a young child, he suffered retinoblastoma, cancer of the optic nerve. But Lin’s disability was not an obstacle. Instead, he used his blindness to heighten sensory perception, developing a sense of spatial awareness that meant he could work his way around a room with the confidence of a sighted person. He was also an obsessive foodie and an accomplished violinist…and he translated The Oxford Companion to Wine into Braille. 

But it was Lin’s humour that I loved the most. During one e-mail exchange, I asked Lin how he read my messages. He told me he used text-to-speech software, upon which I typed a paragraph of random letters so that all he heard was gobbledygook. He loved it.

I drank Mountford’s Burgundy-inspired wines regularly in the early days of my career. Eventually, the Eatons sold Mountford. When I visited the estate in 2010, Lin told me of friction with the new owners, and it was no surprise when he quit five years later. Sadly, CP Lin died last February at the age of 54.

Over lunch with friends in Hong Kong recently, a bottle of 1998 Mountford Pinot Noir was poured blind. It was one of the first wines Lin made at Mountford. Still youthful in colour, the 1998 suggests Morey-Saint-Denis on the nose due to the darker fruit, more marine-driven than floral, a little surly before opening. Something gave away its New Zealand roots. After almost three decades, the palate has held up remarkably well, with dark berry fruit, graphite and a little brine. There is gentle but insistent grip. This is Pinot Noir with a backbone, perhaps in lieu of finesse. It displays a sense of craftsmanship after many years in bottle — it’s easy to understand why this era of Mountford has a cult following. Suffice it to say, if you kept bottles in your cellar, they are drinking extremely well and, based on this example, show little sign of reaching the end of their drinking plateau. 92​/Drink 2026-2036.

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