Felton Road Cornish Point Pinot Noir 2024

Felton Road Cornish Point Pinot Noir 2024

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. 

The unique gravity flow winery enabled the grapes to be gently destemmed directly into open-top fermenters without pumping, with 25% 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 20% new French oak barrels from artisan Burgundian coopers. In accordance with our non interventionalist approach to winemaking, this wine was fermented with indigenous yeast and malolactic, and was not fined or filtered.

Fantastic wine, a bouquet of raw energy and purity of fruit. Layers of red berry fruits framed by a savoury dried herb complexity, scents of soil and barrel spice, earth and gentle wood smoke, a sweetness of some new wood and dried potpourri. Taut, tense and youthful on the palate with a core of raspberry and black cherry flesh, some boysenberry then fruit and barrel spices, sand and clay. Lengthy, youthful with plenty of cellar time ahead. Best drinking likely from 2029 through 2040. Cameron Douglas MS – 96 points – Outstanding

This is so perfumed, with violet, fresh strawberry and black cherry aromas. It’s medium-bodied with ultra-fine tannins and a persistent and caressing finish. From organically grown grapes. Drink or hold. James Suckling – 98 Points

Intense, fragrant pinot noir with a delicious and distinctive flavour footprint that includes a medley of floral, dark berry and mixed spice characters. The wine evolved as it sat in the glass, becoming mellower and slightly more complex. A pleasure to drink now but there is certainly no rush. Bob Campbell MW – 97 Points