Felton Road Pinot Noir Cornish Point 2020

Intense floral notes of lavender and violets along with plum, clove and dark chocolate. This smaller berried and earlier harvest at Cornish Point contributes saturating fruit, spice and hints of sandalwood on the palate. Brooding with serious intent amongst the black plum and mocha flavours, the entire package is utterly complete and there is no doubt time will reveal further complexity and intrigue.

Felton Road farms four properties totalling 32 ha in the Bannockburn sub-region of Central Otago. This wine is from Cornish Point vineyard where the close proximity to water creates a unique mesoclimate. 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, with 20% retained 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 30% 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 was not fined or filtered.