Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Cornish Point Pinot Noir by Felton Road

Pam and myself tried a bottle of the 2006 Cornish Point Pinot from Felton Road. This spectacularly beautiful vineyard has been something of a Pinot experimentation field for the last 10 years or so, where Nigel and his team were trying out different clones, rootstocks etc of Pinot ir order to see what works best in this region. It has up until now been bottled off seperately and sold slightly cheaper than Felton Road. It has always been a bit more forward, a bit less complex, a fruitier style than the Felton Road. 2006 is no different, but it is delicious all the same - medium bodied, with loads of raspberry and cherry fruit aith chocolate and spice mingling in the background. One of those bottles that is not big enough. I think Pam drank it all....

Anyway, from the brilliant 2007 vintage onwards, the best of Cornish Point will be bottled as a Felton Road Single Vineyard Cornish Point ( a sort of Premier Cru). What doesn't make it into the premier cru will be blended into Felton Road Pinot Noir. So, Cornish Point will, along with Calvert and (I think ) Elms, will become a premier cru, Felton Road will be equivalent to the village level in Burgundy which means the Block 3 and Block 5 will become the grands crus - yikes!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Gabriel,

Glad to see the blog and I look forward to reading more.

Had some of the Muddy Water Hare's Breath recently. I thought it was excellent and worked really well with a light(ish) chorizo/mushroom/lemon pasta. Would be interesting to compare it side-by-side with the Cornish Point et al.

I will get round to it eventually!