Felton Road Pinot Noir Block 5 2023

Nigel Greening purchased Felton Road in 2000, and alongside longtime winemaker Blair Walter has built it into one of the defining producers of New Zealand Pinot Noir — biodynamically certified (Demeter and BioGro) and run on an unwaveringly minimal-intervention philosophy: wild yeast fermentation, wild malolactic, subtle use of new oak, and no fining or filtration anywhere in the range. Block 5 sits on a gentle north-facing slope in the middle of The Elms vineyard, within the Bannockburn sub-region of Central Otago — soils here vary from heavy loess and silt through clay lake-bed deposits to angular schist gravels, a complexity that gives the wine its distinctive darker, more structured character compared to sibling single-vineyard bottlings. Alongside Block 3, it's widely regarded as one of Felton Road's two flagship single-site Pinots. The 2023 saw fruit handled entirely by gravity, with 20% retained as whole clusters, and the wine typically ages around sixteen months in roughly 25% new French oak.

The result is consistently rated among Central Otago's most serious, long-lived Pinots: dark cherry, plum, and blue fruit meet dried herbs, cracked pepper, baking spice, and a hint of minty, toasted oak, with real tannic grip and structure beneath the fruit. Jancis Robinson has described it as "rather restrained... with a definitely dry, savoury finish," while Felton Road's own tasting notes liken the palate's expansion to a "peacock's tail" — quiet entry giving way to broad, layered complexity.