Felton Road

Pinot Noir, Block 5, Central Otago, 2023

Name: Pinot Noir, Block 5, Central Otago
Brand: Felton Road
Price: 175 GBP

95+/100

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

96/100

Vinous

Available Vintages

all 2018 2023

delivery

in bond

En primeur

2023
3x75cl
EP
Allocation Only

Justerini & Brooks Tasting note

A generous nose of hedgerow berry fruit and violets. The palate is full and expressive with plenty of structure, power and grip. Flowing red and dark fruit, notes of wild herbs, leading to a lovely minerality on the finish. Concentrated and more backward than the other wines, pleasing to see such detail and expression of flavour already but there is a lot more to come from this. The tannins have a firm grip on this initially, but a little aeration and these soon melt into core of the wine, allowing the deep and velvety fruit to come to the fore. Gentle north facing slope in the middle of The Elms vineyard planted in 1993. The soils vary up the slope from heavy loess and silt, clay lakebed deposits, and angular schist gravels. 20% whole Clusters. 16 Months in 25% French new Oak Barrels.

delivery information

GUARANTEED PROVENANCE

Provenance in fine wine

When it comes to purchasing wine, provenance is of upmost importance. A wine’s history – where it’s sourced from and how it’s been stored – can have an enormous influence on the eventual enjoyment it provides. At Justerini & Brooks, we can trace nearly every case back to the domaine, estate or Château it originally came from; we ship from over 200 wine producers throughout the world.

Wines not bought directly from the vineyard are either sourced from trusted suppliers, with whom we share the same philosophy and rigour in buying, or from our own network of Cellarers customers. These customers’ wines are stored in optimal conditions in Octavian Corsham and, in the vast majority of cases, have been stored by us since the wine was first shipped. We do not purchase wine from auctions.

We feel it is equally important to for our customers that the case they buy and leave in storage with us is exactly the same case they subsequently have delivered. This may sound obvious and straightforward, yet we are one of very few merchants to have taken measures to ensure this.

We have created a system where every case is independent, thereby ensuring a trail of ownership and peace of mind for every customer.

The Journey

Justerinis ensures that every case of wine stored with Cellarers (Wines) Ltd has a unique identifier and customer’s name, almost unheard of in the industry as it is expensive to administer. These details are printed and placed on every case which is logged and recorded under your account name and kept in the world’s most renowned storage facility, Octavian Corsham.

This information is sent from our systems to the warehouse every day to ensure the trail of ownership is verified and upheld.

While customer reserves are stored in Corsham, our physical stocks are kept in Hoddesdon, further providing a geographical separation between customers’ wines with Cellarers and Justerinis’ own stock.

Further Reassurance

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is a legally separate limited company from Justerini & Brooks which currently holds approximately £450 million worth of customer reserves. It is fully insured to catastrophic loss. Many merchants will state that wine in their care is fully insured, but in reality this is on an individual case basis with insufficient cover for total loss as this is prohibitively expensive. The cover provided by Octavian and Justerini & Brooks is unmatched.

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is audited by PwC every year.

Critic Reviews

95+/100

Erin Larkin,

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2023 Block 5 Pinot Noir is muscular and powerful and savory, totally in line with its esteemed reputation up to this point. This 2023 vintage has retained all of the thundering drive that the wine has become famous for, yet, via the fruit, it posits it in a highly focused and precise manner. The fruit feels lighter and more persistent, the tannins deftly handled and overwhelmingly sophisticated. Flavors include sandalwood, mortadella, cherry compote, dried herbs, pink peppercorns and crushed rocks. I love this wine because it tastes like Central Otago, specifically Bannockburn, but every aspect that has been able to be reined in has been, making for an elevated drinking experience. Excellent. Quite likely the best yet. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

drinking window 2025 - 2038

date of review 03/2025

96/100

Rebecca Gibb,

Vinous

Layered and intriguing, the 2023 Pinot Noir Block 5 is finely fragranced, offering bags of primary sweet fruit, dried herbs and nutmeg spices. It is concentrated, focused and sinewy, with resolved, drawn-out tannins that give a sense of texture and provide focus, line and length. This is a baby. It will age beautifully.

drinking window 2025 - 2038

date of review 02/2025

product details

Specifications

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abv:

13.5%

allergen information

This product may contain sulphites. Full allergen information is available upon request, please call our Customer Relations Team on +44 (0)20 7484 6430.