Felton Road Pinot Noir Bannockburn 2022

A vivid nose of deep florals: dark roses, violets, and an undertow of ripe red fruit. The palate really shows the best of each vineyard that makes up the cuvée. A pure but powerful drive of fruit on a perfect cusp of ripeness, with complexing notes of sandalwood and spice. This is all about harmony and balance with the transparency of fruit allowing the detail to shine through. Silken tannins finish the package.

Felton Road farms four properties totalling 34 ha in the Bannockburn subregion of Central Otago. This wine is a blend from our four vineyards; Cornish Point, Calvert, MacMuir and The Elms. Meticulous summer management of a single vertical shoot positioned (VSP) canopy ensures even and early fruit maturity. Shoot thinning, shoot positioning, leaf plucking, bunch thinning and harvest are all carried out by hand to ensure optimum quality fruit. Cover crops are planted between rows to assist in vine balance and to improve soil health and general biodiversity.

The unique gravity flow winery enabled the grapes to be gently destemmed directly into open-top fermenters without pumping, retaining 20% as whole clusters. Traditional fermentation with a moderately long maceration on skins has extracted good colour and tannin with considerable depth of flavour. This wine was aged for 13 months in 25% new French oak barrels from artisan Burgundian coopers. In accordance with our non-interventionalist approach to winemaking, this wine was fermented with indigenous yeast and malolactic, and was not fined or filtered.