Felton Road

The Free Bacchus Story

Central Otago is the southernmost wine region on earth. Winter frosts can take a crop, the growing season is short, and the whole enterprise sits on the edge of what Pinot Noir will tolerate, which is precisely why the wines taste the way they do.

Felton Road farms four vineyards in Bannockburn under certified organic and biodynamic standards, with compost made on site, cover crops through the rows and animals integrated into the system. In a marginal climate, that is a considerably harder decision than it would be in a warm dry one: the tools available when a difficult season arrives are fewer, and the consequences of a bad year land directly on the balance sheet rather than on a spray schedule.

Greening has said they had not wanted certification at all, and took it only because they were seeing more and more spurious claims in the market. His answer to being called sustainable is nobody's.

They do it anyway, and the wines have become the reference point for New Zealand Pinot Noir — the Block 3 and Block 5 bottlings in particular, which come from specific parcels farmed and vinified separately rather than blended into a house style. That decision is the same one being made in the vineyard: keep the differences rather than average them away.

The estate is also unusually transparent about method, publishing detail on farming and winemaking that most producers treat as proprietary. It is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that tends to correlate with having nothing much to hide.