Felton Road: 2025 Releases Out Now

The Real Review named Felton Road New Zealand's Winery of the Year in 2024, then again in 2025. Robert Parker said the inaugural 1997 Pinot Noirs could pass for Grand Cru Burgundy in a blind lineup. Blair Walter made that 1997 vintage and has made every one since. James Suckling has called Felton Road the DRC of Central Otago. The estate has spent the last twenty years deliberately not getting any bigger. Production has been held flat, there is no bought-in fruit and never has been, and the whole operation still sits on 32 hectares across four north-facing vineyards in Bannockburn, Central Otago, all Demeter certified biodynamic since 2010. Viticulturist Gareth King and his team walk 145 kilometres of rows tending more than 130,000 vines by hand. Demand has climbed steadily through all of it. The allocations have not, which is why these wines move the way they do.

2025 came through very dry, with heat tracking the long-term average from start to finish, no spikes and no cold snaps. Picking ran slow and deliberate rather than rushed, which is exactly the kind of season a site-obsessed estate wants.

Five wines have landed. The two Bannockburns, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, are drawn across all four vineyards and remain the truest read on house style. Block 3 comes off the oldest plantings on the estate and remains the benchmark by which Central Otago Pinot gets measured. MacMuir is the newest single vineyard in the range, first bottled in 2021, named for Nigel Greening's mother's clan, whose ancestors fought at the Battle of Bannockburn itself. Cornish Point sits on a spit of land jutting into Lake Dunstan, bought as an apricot orchard in 1999 after local growers told Greening they were the best in the region.

The 2025s arrive ahead of the critics, as they usually do. Full details on all five below.