A story about craftsmanship…
A story about craftsmanship… This is a story about craftsmanship. Or, at least, I think it is going to be… let’s see where it goes. It begins about 20 years ago, when I was wandering through a rather seedy bit of Brisbane, not so many of those these days! I looked in the window of […]
On AI
On AI AI, as it is called, is a synonym for ‘large language models’, which is the crude idea that if you get a computer to read enough documents and books, regardless of what they are, it can create a statistical model of the thing we call knowledge and regurgitate it on demand. The flaw […]
Spring 2023
Winemaker’s Comment – Spring 2023 I’m not sure how many of our followers know the origin of our logo. (The clue is on the labels when the fruit originates from “The Elms Bannockburn Vineyard”.) Stewart selected the Elm tree as a logo for our brand and surreptitiously sourced the image from Hugh Johnson’s The International Book […]
Harvest 2023
Nigel’s Harvest Blog 2023 Tuesday March 21st For a few days now, the smart money has been on today for the start of harvest. It has been very cool and surprisingly moist over the last two weeks or so, in fact it has snowed on the hills three times in that period. Rain was forecast […]
Autumn 2023
Winemaker’s Comment – Autumn 2023 Vintage 2023 is all safely in the barn – every farmer’s fervent hope. While we were fortunate in Central Otago not to suffer from the devastating consequences of Cyclone Gabrielle, we did experience our own, much milder, version of a wet and cool finish to the season. After a hot, […]
January 2023, Winners and Losers
I am English; old enough to have been raised in the somewhat quaint spirit of ‘it’s not who wins, it’s how you play the game’. Not a philosophy you hear so much these days. It was killed off by its more aggressive American cousin: ‘show me second place, I’ll show you a loser’. I […]
December 2022
It has taken a while to update this. The problem is that too much is changing the world at the moment; climate, conflict, disease, energy instability and the inexorable rising gap between those that have and those that don’t. This is overwhelming stuff for a winery website and I’m not sure how one addresses it, […]
August 2022
The boat has landed. I am struck by what a significant part of some people’s life these four words play. I have stayed on Islands in the Pacific, where the opportunities to buy something edible shrink over a few weeks with locals nodding sagely: “boat lands Thursday” they will proclaim, Friday will be a good […]
Sustainability – Our story…
Sustainability Sustainable: /səˈsteɪnəb(ə)l/ Adjective. Sustainability is the capacity to endure. Sustainable ecosystems are ones that are able to maintain, support and persevere. At Felton Road, sustainability is part of our essence – it is what we do. As an organic and biodynamic vineyard, with an intense desire to make wines that exhibit a strong sense of […]
Spring 2022
Winemaker’s Comment – Spring 2022 This might be the first time I have sent out a release letter that doesn’t talk about our wines! Over the years, the line ‘being a good global citizen’ has increasingly felt like a general expression of ‘feelgood’; a placebo statement that means very little. Not this year, though. 2022 […]