Felton Road

Felton Road began with a man reading the landscape. In 1991 Stewart Elms worked out that the north-facing slopes at the end of Felton Road in Bannockburn were among the warmest and most promising sites in Central Otago, the southernmost commercial wine region in the world, and laid out The Elms there, the first vines going in the following year; the elm on the label is a nod to his name. Blair Walter arrived as winemaker in 1996 and has never left. In 2000 the estate was bought by Nigel Greening, a British entrepreneur who has been the rarest kind of owner, one who backed the vineyards and the biodynamics and keeps out of the cellar.

The estate now farms four properties in Bannockburn, 34 ha in all: The Elms, with the celebrated Block 3 and Block 5; Calvert; Cornish Point; and MacMuir, the newest, bought in 2010 and planted in 2012. The climate is continental, hot dry summers, cold winters, a wide swing between day and night, on schist and loess soils. Only three grapes are grown, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Riesling. The vineyards have been farmed organically and biodynamically since 2002, with full Demeter certification in 2010 and BioGro certification in 2020, and everything is estate fruit.

The cellar follows the same idea of not getting in the way: gravity flow, indigenous yeasts for both fermentations, some whole bunches, restrained oak, no fining and no filtration. The range runs from the Bannockburn estate blends in all three grapes through the single-vineyard Calvert and Cornish Point Pinot Noirs, MacMuir from the 2021 vintage, Block 2 and Block 6 Chardonnay and Block 1 Riesling, up to the two Elms blocks, Block 5 and Block 3. Block 3, from the first plantings of 1992 to 1994, is the wine most often set beside premier cru Burgundy, and the one that settled the argument that New Zealand could do this at all.