Block 5 Pinot Noir

Block 5 sits in the heart of The Elms, the home vineyard Stewart Elms laid out in 1991 at the western end of Felton Road, in a gently sloping north-facing valley cut into the Bannockburn hills at the southern end of the Cromwell Basin. The block was planted in 1993, and what makes it different from its famous neighbour Block 3 is underground: the soils change up the slope from heavy loess and silt through a band of clay lakebed deposits to angular schist gravels, and the estate credits that band of clay and the Lochar gravels at the block's southern end with the finesse it looks for here, where Block 3's deeper Waenga soils give power.

The canopy work and the harvest are all done by hand, from shoot thinning and leaf plucking to bunch thinning, and the four Felton Road properties, 34 ha in all, have been farmed biodynamically since 2002, Demeter certified since 2010 and BioGro certified since 2020. The winemaker is Blair Walter, as he has been since 1996.

2020 was a cool year that the estate rather liked. Spring was average or a little below with low rainfall, flowering came in cool, wet conditions that left small berries and light bunches, and March was one of the coolest the estate has known. Block 5 was picked late, from 7 to 20 April, with the crop where the estate wants it, and the estate credits the long cool ripening for concentrated fruit that kept its acidity.

The winery's habit is to get out of the way. A fifth of the fruit went in as whole clusters and the rest was destemmed straight into the fermenters by gravity, then left to soak for eight or nine days before the indigenous yeasts took over, with hand punch-downs up to twice a day and 23 days on skins in all. The wine was pressed into barrel, again by gravity, into the underground cellar, and spent 17 months in French oak, 30% new, with two rackings and no fining or filtration before bottling in early September 2021.