Old Coach Road Nelson Pinot Noir 2025

86 Points (4 Stars) - Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, January 2026

Vineyard: Seifried Brightwater and Rabbit Island vineyards
Date of Harvest: March 2025
pH of Wine: 3.72
T.A of Wine: 4.4g/L
Alcohol: 13.5%
Suitable for Vegetarian and Vegans: Yes

Our Brightwater vineyard lies about 15km from the coast and is nestled under the Richmond Ranges on the southern end of the Waimea Plains. The soil is a combination of rocks and river boulders, which is hard on farm equipment but vital for holding the warmth of Nelson’s sun and ripening grapes. Low nutrient and water levels in the vineyard help to restrict plant vigour, producing fruit with lively, concentrated flavour.

Our Rabbit Island vineyard is situated on a wide river flat, about 1.5km from the sea, which helps moderate temperatures. The soil is gravelly sandy loam, which marks the sites of Māori kūmara (sweet potato) beds prior to European settlement in the early 1800s. The Māori transferred and spread fine gravel and sand over the land to provide suitable soils for their kūmara plantings. Scrub was burned to give ash and charcoal, which increased soil fertility and characteristic topsoil. This fertility is now considerably reduced due to modern farming.

The fruit in our 2025 Old Coach Road Nelson Pinot Noir comes from our Brightwater and Rabbit Island vineyards where the Pinot Noir vines are well over thirty years in age
and are showing great maturity and depth of flavour.

Fruit was picked incrementally in March 2025 at the peak of flavour and phenolic ripeness. The de-stemmed fruit had a brief cold maceration period before individual parcels of fruit were inoculated for fermentation. Throughout fermentation plunging occurred twice daily and was tapered off to once daily as the fermentation finished. The young wine was drained to new, one and two-year-old French barriques for malolactic fermentation and barrel aging. The wine was stabilised and bottled January 2026.