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Wine Blog

Felton Road - The Road Less Traveled

By Anto Coates

Yesterday I had to forgo my frozen slow-cooked lunch in favour of a roast quail at Arbitrageur over some Felton Road wines.  As Robert Palmer not-so-famously sang in the 1980s, "some guys have all the luck”.  

My hosts were Blair Walter and Tracy Thompson, who are responsible for Felton Road’s winemaking and client relations respectively.  They were in town for a whirlwind visit of their on and off-premise interests.

Felton Road’s reputation needs no elucidation here. What strikes me personally about the wines is the way they seem to be indefinably more than the sum of their parts. They are always immaculately put together, a feat in itself considering they’re made using notoriously temperamental wild ferments.  Whatever the risks of indigenous yeasts may be, Felton Road wines are proof that the rewards are equally great.  They have transcended ‘very good’ and are now knocking on the door of the truly great wines.  The telltale sign of this transition is that they leave you with a little sense of mystery, like you didn’t quite get all of what was there in the glass.  Felton Road wines are all about subtext – more what is implicit than explicit.  They insinuate where some of their adolescent contemporaries are still hollering from soap boxes.

Felton Road’s 14th vintage is now in the books, and they exist in the rarefied air of the upper echelon of New Zealand producers.  Primarily known for Pinot Noir and Riesling, their Chardonnay is also a star in the making and was in fact the inspiration for my comments about subtext (above).  Their Bannockburn Chardonnay 2009 (formerly their estate Felton Road label, which they were sick of being known as their ‘standard’ or ‘entry level’ wine) is a freshly acidic, lemon curd style of Chardonnay that like Kumeu River’s, often sees 100% malolactic fermentation but emerges on the other side with a backbone of acid that belies the fact.  Where many feel that Chardonnay has been an underachiever in the region, Felton Road’s examples might just be the high-tide mark thus far.  The Block 2 Chardonnay 2008 is an example of the happy disconnect between the finished wine and the winemaking.  To me it tastes rounder so it seems like it should be oakier (it’s not, 15% new French) and leesier (no battonage). Blair Walter puts it down to the complexity of the 16-year-old vines and the 100% Mendoza composition.

My notes on the Pinot Noirs put the Cornish Point 09 Pinot marginally on top of the Bannockburn 09 and the Block 3 but looking back through my effusive notes on all three I struggle to remember how I came to that decision. My notes on the Cornish Point recall a wine with great florals, vanillin oak and spice, working around clean vivid fruit with almost a tangy hint of citrus in the young, focused wine. Block 3 had more licorice/anise note with a lovely smooth texture of plums in fresh cream, while the Bannockburn 2009 All the wines looked magnificent and provided a perfect foil to Arbitrageur’s delicious roast quail stuffed with Italian sausage. After a lengthy period admiring and planning my assault on the bird, I was relieved to see a finger bowl arrive – tacit permission to drop the pretence and engage fingers.

As a final note: just as we did in Arbitrageur’s dining room, you simply must enjoy wines of this quality from glassware fit for the task. To drink them from cut glass is like watching a beautifully shot foreign film with the subtitles off – you can make out the general plot, but you will miss the details.   Thanks once again to the team at Felton Road and Stephan and the crew at Arbitrageur. 

Today, it’s back to reality. My frozen meal, now thawed, awaits Felton-less in the fridge.    
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