Hands up if you know how many New Zealand wineries made it into The World's Most Admired Wine Brands 2023 top 50 list?

If you said four, well done. This year's top 50 list includes Felton Road (for the seventh consecutive year), Villa Maria, Cloudy Bay and Craggy Range. That's no mean feat for a country this size, particularly when faced with luminaries from wine giants such as Italy, Argentina and Spain. The winery in first place this year is Antinori, which has been making wine continuously since it was founded in 1385 and it still remains in family hands. 

Felton Road in top 50

The launch of this year's Felton Road single vineyard wines this month is the reason we are looking more closely at this impressive winery, which celebrated 25 years of winemaking at the end of 2022. Owner Nigel Greening and winemaker (and part owner) Blair Walter have a zero growth policy at Felton Road, so, despite adding a new single vineyard wine last year, there will be no further growth. No new vineyard acquisitions. No additional volume. It has produced 150,000 bottles a year since 1991 and the plan is to continue making these relatively modest volumes. 

Felton Road is now a member of the International Wineries for Climate Action, whose members also include fellow Top 50 members Familia Torres, Ridge and Symington.
“This is critical for our goal of achieving zero-carbon emissions without using offsets,” says Greening.

Increased prices

Prices have risen this year as a result of inflation and wage rises.  Greening says the winery team has done its best to keep the rise as modest as possible. 

New Feltons in store

The new release 2022 Felton Road single vineyard wines will arrive in store over the next month or two. 

Watch our newsletter for news of their arrival. In the meantime, collectors can anticipate which wines they will look at buying. 

As winemaker Blair Walter says, these wines are not clones but very individualistic expressions of place; even if some of the places happen to be right next to each other, the variation in the topography of the land, its elevation, aspect to the sun and of course soil types, all of these factors make for wines that are very different in style. They are exciting wines to drink now and even better with age.

The wines in this release are:

2022 Felton Road Bannockburn Pinot Noir

2022 Felton Road Cornish Point Pinot Noir

2022 Felton Road MacMuir Pinot Noir

2022 Felton Road Block 3 Pinot Noir

2022 Felton Road Bannockburn Chardonnay