Felton Road Cornish Point Pinot Noir 2025

Vineyard & Viticulture
Felton Road farms four properties totalling 34 ha in
the Bannockburn subregion of Central Otago. This
wine is from Cornish Point vineyard where the close
proximity to Lake Dunstan (surrounded on three
sides) creates a unique mesoclimate. Fine loess and
silt soils overlie alluvial gravels interspersed with
calcareous seams. 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.
Vintage
Abundant rain in September and October replenished
soil-water reserves. After a later than average
budbreak, the vines grew well until a katabatic frost,
the most extensive in twenty years, struck the
vineyards on 3 November. Fortunately, losses were
localised within vineyards and occurred early enough
in the season for many vines to recover. A benign,
settled period coincided with flowering and a
successful fruit set did much to compensate for the
damage from the frost. Summer saw even
temperatures and a protracted dry period, which
served to slow down ripening and concentrate
flavours. After February finished with a warm flourish,
the weather cooled distinctly, especially at night.
Harvest commenced at Cornish Point on 25 March
and was completed on 1 April. The slow and
measured conclusion of ripening has endowed the
wines with an impressive breadth, harmony and
finesse.
Vinification
The unique gravity flow winery enabled the grapes to
be gently destemmed directly into open-top
fermenters without pumping, with 23% 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 24%
new French oak barrels from artisan Burgundian
coopers. In accordance with our noninterventionalist approach to winemaking, this wine
was fermented with indigenous yeast and malolactic,
and was not fined or filtered.

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