Felton Road,
Central Otago, New Zealand
Visiting this important Central Otago winery, known for its stunning
Pinot Noirs
Felton Road is
one of the legendary names in New Zealand wine. They’re probably
the most famous of the Central Otago wineries, making some highly
regarded Pinot Noirs. I visited for the first time back in 2010, and
it proved an appropriate starting point for my first experience of
the region. I was hosted then by assistant winemaker Todd Stevens
(now winemaker at Neudorf), as chief winemaker Blair Walter (who has
been at Felton Road since the 1997 vintage) was away on a Pinot Noir
boot camp.
The winery and The Elms vineyard
My second visit
was three years later, in January 2013, and this time I was taken
around by owner Nigel Greening and Blair Walter.
Nigel
Greening
Some history.
Felton Road dates back to 1991, when Stewart Elms planted the Elms
Vineyard on Felton Road, in the Bannockburn district of Central
Otago. Current owner Nigel Greening first purchased Cornish Point
Vineyard in 1998 (an 8.6 hectare block), and then in 2000 purchased
Felton Road with the Elms Vineyard, which now has 14.6 hectares of
vines.
The entire estate
is now run biodynamically, although currently the wines aren’t
certified biodynamic, just organic (there was a problem with the
certification process). The heart of the range consists of a series
of five world-class Pinot Noirs: Cornish Point, Block 3, Block 5,
Calvert (a leased 10 hectare neighbouring vineyard whose fruit has
until recently been shared with Craggy Range and Pyramid Valley
Vineyards) and the regular Bannockburn Pinot Noir. They’re all
worth seeking out, and show their subtle differences in site very
well. In addition, three superb Rieslings and a couple of solid
Chardonnays make up this exciting range.
Cornish
Point Vineyard
I began my first
visit with a look at Cornish Point vineyard, which is beautifully
situated just across the water from the town of Cromwell. It’s a
spit of land sticking out into Lake Dunstan, and its 8.6 hectares
are split into 25 different blocks, with 18 combinations of
rootstocks and clones of Pinot Noir. Cornish Point Pinot Noir was
released under its own label from 2003–2006, but from 2007 this
has been a single-vineyard Felton Road wine. ‘There’s a
generosity to Cornish Point,’ says Todd. ‘It’s an important
vineyard, making a generous, attractive wine.’ The fruit that
doesn’t go into the single-vineyard bottling goes into the regular
Felton Road Pinot Noir, for which it is an important component.
~ Calvert (and below)
Next we headed
over to Calvert, a gently sloping, north facing vineyard first
planted in 1999, with two more planting phases in 2001 and 2003. The
soils are deep silt loams, with moderately high fertility. The
vineyard is quite consistent, and because it is a bit lower down
than the Elms, it ripens sooner. Interestingly, the fruit from this
leased vineyard, managed by the Felton Road team, has for a number
of years been split three ways, with Calvert wines also being made
by Craggy Range and Pyramid Valley Vineyards. The three different
wines that result are an interesting case study in how three
excellent wineries each imprint their own stylistic influences on
grapes from the same site. Does the terroir come through in the
wines, or is winemaking the overriding influence? In the future,
however, the impact of a divorce on the owner means that half of the
vineyard was put up for sale, and Felton snapped it up, taking the
three Pinot Noir blocks Willows, Aurum and Springs. This means that
the three-way split will cease.
Finally, we had a
look at the Elms vineyard, which is the home block of Felton Road,
surrounding the winery building. It was planted over two phases
(blocks 1–9 1992–1994 and 10–13 in 2001). There are currently
8.1 ha of Pinot Noir, 4.1 ha of Chardonnay and 2.2 ha of Riesling,
all matched to the specific soil types that best suit each variety.
Felton recently
acquired a new site, MacMuir, which is next to Calvert and which
they planted in 2013 with Pinot Noir. It’s another 5.8 hectares,
bringing the total vine area they own to around 32 hectares in
total. ‘That’s all we want,’ says Nigel. ‘We have no
intention of growing beyond this.’
Blair
Walter
So, to my second
visit. When Nigel Greening collected me from Queenstown airport, I
was probably not in the best condition, after 22 hours to Auckland,
followed by a frantic sprint with bags to the domestic terminal to
try to make my tight connection.
So what has
changed of late at Felton?
‘One of the
things we have been really keen to do in the last few years has been
to step back as far as we can from all forms of winemaking
decision,’ says Nigel.
‘At any point
where a winemaker has to make a decision, we ask ourselves whether
it is possible to complete that step without having to intervene,
because by definition all interventions are a human distortion in
the process.’
‘You have to
have a “recipe” – a winemaking process – but we run an
identical process for all the wines. The only thing that changes is
small changes in length of élevage for a couple of the large cuvées.
And if we saw a significant change in fruit character due to
vintage, it might provoke a slight change in our stem percentage.
But that is the degree of the tone control that we allow
ourselves.’
‘All the wines
are essentially coming in between 25 and 30% whole bunch. The whole
bunches go into the bottom of a fermenter and then it is topped up
with whole berries. There is a 5–10 day cold soak before a
spontaneous wild ferment. If we are not getting a ferment kicking
off we will warm it slightly. Generally, they will do it themselves.
We haven’t opened a packet of yeast for eight years.’
Felton Road are
taking part in yeast researcher Matt Goddard’s study. Goddard has
been looking to characterize the populations of yeasts in vineyards,
wineries and wines. At Kumeu River, where he started his research,
he found that the yeasts that did the wild ferments in the
Chardonnays were local to the area and even the vineyard.
I asked Nigel
Greening what results had been obtained at Felton Road. ‘It is
exactly the same result as found at Kumeu River – the biggest
single cohort is unique to place, and this is 30–35% of the
yeasts. The second largest cohort tracks back through the barrels to
the forests the oak was grown in. This is really interesting for
Chardonnay if you are barrel fermenting. They can track those back
by oak origin. Then for the cohorts after this it gets harder to
define where they came from. Just as with Kumeu River, Matt Goddard
couldn’t find a single strain that tracks back to a laboratory
yeast, so we were clean.’
I asked Nigel
whether he thought that the yeasts were part of the terroir. ‘Yes,
but I can’t tell you what part. Virtually everything we call
flavour in wine from the fruity/aromatic side are fermentation
products. They don’t come from the fruit. My assumption is that
the aromatic precursors in the fruit are the pathway that then go
through the yeast to create the aromatic chemicals we sense. Any
Sauvignon Blanc maker will tell you the choice of yeasts has a
profound effect on flavour. In our case it must similarly play a
part.’
What is the
winemaking here, for Pinot Noir? ‘The ferments would be getting
three punch downs a day and then post ferment maceration for around
a week. Typically 21 days on skins is the cycle. There’s nothing
particularly unusual in any of this. The wine is moved by gravity by
barrel, where it spends anywhere from 11 months to 18 months.
Bannockburn has to be 11 months because we need the barrels by next
vintage. The others get 15 months but we let Block 5 have an extra 3
months. It does the whole second winter because it has more stuffing
in it, it seems to like it. We do wild malolactic fermentations, no
fining and no filtration.’
‘The only
additions that go into the wines are the occasional use of enzyme.
We find that we do need some enzyme use as a preferable alternative
to filtration. If we didn’t use the enzyme we would have to
filter.’
One of the issues
in Central Otago is that the acidity of the wines during
fermentation is unstable, which makes it very hard to avoid adding
acidity. ‘It is seen quite widely around the world: its happens in
Oregon and elsewhere in New Zealand. There seems to be acid
instability during fermentation and you can lose anything up to 3 g
of acid over the course of fermentation. The normal practice in most
wineries in the region is to do acid measurements daily during
fermentation and then to add tartaric acid to balance this out,the objective being is to end up with a wine that has the
same TA at the end of fermentation as happened at the beginning. No
one has come up with a convincing explanation for what is causing
this.’
‘One thing that
intrigues us is that it is a much smaller phenomenon at Cornish
Point than it is at our other two vineyards. There is no difference
in viticulture, winemaking, clones, rootstocks or vine age that
accounts for this. We are assuming there is something about the
climate or soils at Cornish point that results in better acid
stability. We are working on this at the moment with some
researchers. If we can find an explanation then we might be able to
deal with it, and then it would be nice not to have to acidify.’
‘The wines have
a small sulfur dose as they go into the fermenter, then they are
sulfured a second time once they have completed malo, and we adjust
the level to 30 ppm free to go to bottling. This is for Pinot
Noir.’
In some ways this
is a test case of terroir, because Felton Road do the same
winemaking for all the wines. ‘We try not to making any blending
decisions, and we also try not to taste the wines with a view to
adjusting or making blending decisions. Essentially, Block 3 and
Block 5 are those blocks, with the exception of young vines from
these blocks which get blended into Bannockburn, our “village”
wine. When it comes to Cornish Point and Calvert, about 30–40%
will go to a single-vineyard bottling, and the balance goes to
Bannockburn. So we have a dilemma: we have to choose which 30–40%
to use. There will typically be eight lots from each of the
vineyards, and we will taste them about three times, blind. We score
them not for their quality as a wine but for their expression of
site. The wines that get the highest scores for Calvertness,
depending on how big the lots are, we will take sufficient wine down
that scoresheet and then draw the line. The Calvertiest ones become
Calvert, and those that show the least Calverntess go into
Bannockburn. The same applies to Cornish Point. Calvert is the more
elegant, tighter, more linear wine. Cornish Point is volutuous,
perfumed. This is naturally what this vineyard does and we want to
show that expression of site as clearly as we can.’
‘The important
thing is that if we have decided that three lots make up Calvert, we
will not put the three together, taste the blend, and see whether we
like it. It simply goes into the bottling tanks and the first time
we try it is when it is going down the line. It is an assembly and
we don’t taste it until it is too late. It is a conscious part of
our letting go of a human decision making process.’
I asked Nigel the
boring question about closures, and when he switched to screwcaps.
‘We started in 2001. We did both 2001–2004, and by then we
didn’t want to see another cork, so we stopped the trial. Since
then we have just been screwcap. We had to continue doing magnums in
cork because we couldn’t get bottles. We still have to do
jeroboams in cork, and we use Diams for these.’
‘The thing I
found most convincing is that when we would open cork and
screwcapped wines blind, occasionally you’d get a perfect cork,
and then you couldn’t tell the difference blind. That told me
everything I needed to know.’
Central Otago is
quite a new region, so in some ways it is a test case of seeing the
effects of vine age, especially in Pinot Noir. ‘Our oldest vines
now are 21 years old, and we have cohorts going back. We see a
fairly profound change around the 10–12 year point. The vines
respond less, their roots are deeper, there is greater inner
strength to them. The wines show less variance, they are less fickle
and there is more permanence. They don’t get bigger: the may get
more structural, but the difference is subtle. There is a solidity
around them. Everyone around here expresses the same thing a
different way: the older vine quality just has a feel of permanence
about it. We would be typical within the region. I did a graph of
average vine age in Bannockburn Pinot the other day. It was at a
relative high point when I came to the winery in 2000, because it
was relying almost entirely on plantings made in 1991/2/3. Then as
we started to expand and plant new vineyards the vine age
progressively dropped. It took us to 2009 to get back to a new high
point. For our Bannockburn Pinot Noir, the average vine age will be
about 12 years.A lot of
producers are in a similar situation, and it’s true across much of
New Zealand. Most of the big improvements we are seeing are coming
from better viticulture, better understanding of climate and how to
respond to it, and vine age. New Zealand Pinot Noir is getting
better year on year because of this.’
In terms of
future directions, Nigel would like to be able to harvest a little
earlier, and have slightly lower alcohol levels. ‘With Pinot Noir
we now understand that we have an earlier picking opportunity, but
it is a very brief one. We will have to harvest in 7–8 days, as
opposed to 18, which is typical, so we will need a lot more
people.’ He says he will be happy if he could pick at 13.8–14.2
potential alcohol, rather than the 14–14.2 that he currently does.
‘I would like brilliance without getting nailed with green
phenolics.’
The focus here is
on Pinot, but what about Chardonnay? ‘Chardonnay might be New
Zealand’s greatest strength. It’s at least as strong a story as
Pinot Noir. To my sorrow it has such a low profile.’
THE
WINES
Felton Road
Bannockburn Pinot Noir 2011 Central Otago, New Zealand Fresh and perfumed with sweet black cherry fruit nose, quite
fine and expressive. Supple, fresh, sweet, elegant and rounded on
the palate with good acidity and a bit of spicy warmth. 93/100
Felton Road
Cornish Point Pinot Noir 2011 Central Otago, New Zealand Smooth, supple and rounded with lovely generous cherry and plum
fruit. Quite ripe, generous and silky with no rough edges. 93/100
Felton Road
Calvert Pinot Noir 2011 Central Otago, New Zealand Beautifully perfumed nose of fine, fresh cherries and plums.
Aromatic and precise. Lovely freshness on the palate with fine
tannins and good acidity. A supple wine with lovely precision.
95/100
Felton Road
Block 3 Pinot Noir 2011 Central Otago, New Zealand A wine that Nigel Greening describes as having, ‘a beginning,
a middle and an end.’ There’s a hint of green on the nose as
well as some bergamot. The palate has nice structure and acidity
giving a backbone to the plum and cherry fruit. Precise, with a hint
of earthiness. 95/100
Felton Road
Block 5 Pinot Noir 2011 Central Otago, New Zealand Lovely cherry, herb and spice here, with good structure. Quite
rich but also has nice savoury freshness. Sweet supple rounded
cherry and berry fruit. Lovely weight. 94/100
Felton Road
Elms Chardonnay 2011 Central Otago New Zealand Very little oak here. Apples, pears, herbs: it’s fresh and
fruit-driven with direct, rounded fruity characters and a hint of
nuttiness. Fruity and simple at the moment but with potential to
develop. 88/100
Felton Road
Bannockburn Chardonnay 2011 Central Otago New Zealand Tight, fresh and focused with a fine, toasty nose and some white
peach and apple fruit. Textured and fine on the palate with nice
acidity and subtle nuttiness. Delicate style. 92/100
Felton Road
Block 2 Chardonnay 2011 Central Otago New Zealand 100% Mendoza clone, which typically has a grapefruit pith back
note. Sweet, mealy, nutty, toasty edge to the nose with fine white
peach and pear fruit. Very fresh with nice acidity and pure pear
fruit, as well as some citrus. Pure, bright and fruit driven; fine
and expressive. 93/100
Felton Road
Dry Riesling 2012 Central Otago New Zealand 12% alcohol, made in a Trocken style from schist/gravel soils.
Tight and vigorous with limey fruit and a hint of fruit sweetness.
Lovely rounded fruit here: it’s dry, but not at all austere.
91/100
Felton
Bannockburn Riesling 2012 Central Otago New Zealand Schist gravel, 8.5% alcohol. Great precision here with lemony
fruit, some grapefruit, and nice sweetness balancing the acidity
(it’s off-dry). Mouthwatering, sweet and fresh with lovely
juiciness. This is the same wine as the dry Riesling, but for this
portion fermentation was stopped, leaving 65 g/litre residual sugar.
TA is 9.5 g/litre. Very convincing. 93/100
Felton Road
Block 1 Riesling 2012 Central Otago New Zealand Grown on loess, which is more Pinot soil. 8.5% alcohol.
Rich-textured and generous with melon, pear and apple notes. The
heavier soil gives more peach and less lime. Lovely balance on this
wine though, and nice sweetness (67 g/litre residual sugar, TA 9.6
g/litre). 92/100
Blair
Walter, chief winemaker, presented these wines. '2009 is amazing for
us,' he says. We regard it as the best vintage we have ever seen.
2010 was also good, but it's hard to say whether it will be better
than 2010.' Blair also talked about his use of whole bunches in the
ferment. 'We typically put in a quarter whole bunch and destem the
rest of the bunches. And then when we punch down we don't go to the
bottom of the tank. After 28 days you can still pull out whole
bunches. They have fermented inside [the intact berries] and there
is still some sweetness that is pulled out.' He thinks this
remaining sweetness is important because it keeps fermentation
ticking along for a while. 'Burgundians typically chaptalise in
six-to-eight small additions. This results in a slightly stressed
fermentation producing more glycerol. This changes the texture and
adds some fruit sweetness. It surprises me that more people don't
use whole bunches.' Blair thinks the weakness of New Zealand Pinot
Noir is that often there is just pure fruit with something missing.
'We are lucky in Central Otago that we have that platform of fruit.
We can then go searching for more interesting characters.'
In
2009 he averaged around 28% stems. Most fermenters have between 10%
and 35% stems. They used to do one fermenter with just whole bunches
(including the stems, of course) each year, but have now given up.
'For us it is too much,' he says. 'It is interesting but the wine
becomes too herbal - it is like a hessian sack character.' But he is
keen on using some stems. 'I believe it gives us an edge to
transform one-dimensional fruity aromas and flavours, but also
texturally: we get more chewy, chocolatey tannins.'
'With
stems, people expect the wines to become angular. I find the
opposite. Destemmed wines taste more angular. A lot of people don't
have the courage [to use stems]; they aren't willing to tolerate
earthiness and herbal characters in the wine.'
Felton
Road Chardonnay 2009
Complex, aromatic, toasty nose is fine and complex with some refined
toastiness and a bit of citrus. Real purity. The palate is fresh and
toasty with lovely elegant fine citrus fruit and subtle nuttiness.
Thrilling. 94/100
Felton
Road Medium Riesling 2009
Sweet limey nose with lots of fruit character. The palate is
off-dry, fresh and textured with with smooth, sweet liminess and a
hint of spicy complexity. 91/100
Felton
Road Pinot Noir Bannockburn 2009
Beautifully aromatic sweet cherry fruit nose is lively, fine and
spicy with real elegance. The palate shows ripe but restrained
cherry fruit with good structure and nice savoury bite. 93/100
Felton
Road Pinot Noir Block 3 2009
Thrillingly elegant nose with spicy aromatics and expresive red
cherry fruit. The palate balances ripeness and elegance with pure,
mineralic spicy cherry fruit. So pure and elegant, yet also
concentrated. 96/100
Felton
Road Cornish Point Vineyard Pinot Noir 2009 Highly aromatic with some sweet cherry fruit and a hint of
herbiness. The palate is sweetly fruited and fresh with a touch of
plumminess as well as good acidity. Lovely wine. 94/100
Felton
Road Calvert Vineyard Pinot Noir 2009 Quite ripe with mineral and iodine notes as well as fresh cherry
fruit. Fresh and quite intense with sappy, spicy, mineral notes and
good acidity. 94/100
Felton
Road Pinot Noir 2003 Sweet and spicy with rich, fudgy, spicy notes under the ripe,
sweet fruit. Showing some evolution with sweet cherry fruit on the
palate and some spiciness. Age seems to make this taste sweeter.
92/100
Felton
Road Block 3 Pinot Noir 2003 Sweet, spicy and a bit herby with warmth on the nose. The palate
is rich, spicy and elegant with a hint of earth to the sweet fruit.
Lovely. 94/100
Tasted
at the winery in January 2010:
Felton
Road Pinot Noir 2008 A blend from all three vineyard sites: The Elms, Cornish Point
and Calvert. Aged in 30% new oak for just under a year. Lovely
elegant nose is forward, rich but balanced with spicy dark cherry
flavours and some subtle meaty notes. The palate has lovely density
and elegance, combining power with restraint, together with some
earthy complexity. 93/100
Felton
Road Cornish Point Pinot Noir 2008 15 months in oak. Lovely smooth, pure, elegant berryish nose
with some really fine pure cherry fruit. Great sweet fruit purity.
The palate is beautifully elegant and expressive with fine sweet
cherry fruit underpinned by some minerality, with spicy notes too.
Fantastic elegance here: really fine. 95/100
Felton
Road Calvert Pinot Noir 2008 This spends 15 months in oak, 30% of which is new. There’s a
subtle spicy, meaty wildness to the nose here, with hints of iodine
and some minerality. The palate is fresh and expressive: bright but
taut with nice minerality and some earthiness. Quite old world in
style, and beautiful. 95/100
Felton
Road Block 3 Pinot Noir 2008 15 months in oak. Beautiful aromatics: smooth, pure cherry and
berry fruit with some floral notes and a hint of herbiness. Again, a
hint of iodine. Nice concentration and structure on the palate, with
lovely focus and some nice weight. Finishes silky: a really
expressive wine. 94/100
Felton
Road Block 5 Pinot Noir 2008 This is right next to Block 3, but the main difference is that
Block 5 has more clay in the soil. It spends 18 months in oak.
Focused, taut nose is pure and aromatic with some spicy minerality
and some non-fruit complexity. The palate is dense with firm
structure underpinning the rich, dark cherry and berry fruits and a
hint of herbiness. Well structured, this has promise for the future
but is currently less seductive than the others. 94/100