SATO WINES, PINOT NOIR L'INSOLITE, 6 Bottle Case 75cl

If there was a boutique producer in New Zealand that resonated with the micro-production, experimental, semi-hipster, natural, "culty" wines that have taken California by storm in the last few year ...Sato would be it. Yoshiaki Sato and his wife Kyoko have quickly made a name for themselves producing some of the most highly talked about and sought after wines in NZ. While travelling in NZ last year many other winemakers I met were really quite jealous that I had managed to pry a few cases of each wine away from Yoshi (who's wines have very quickly become highly allocted and available only to mailing list customers). The wines are essentially "natural wines". Yoshi sources only from organically farmed sources, he refuses outright to use any added yeast, enzymes etc etc. None of the wines are subjected to fining or filtration. The only thing these wines see is a tiny addition of minimal Sulphur pre-bottling. They are pure expressions of place and season. They are made in miniscule quantities (often just a couple barrels - 100 +/- cases).

Yoshiaki Sato and his wife Kyoko moved to Central Otago in 2006 and have been producing wines made with minimal intervention ever since. Yoshiaki and Kyoko have completed vintages together in Burgundy, the Loire and Alsace and to this day work under the mentorship of Pierre Frick. Until now Yoshiaki has been sourcing fruit from organic vineyards around Central Otago and in early 2016 purchased his own farm in the Pisa sub-region which he has planted with Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Gamay Noir and Pinot Noir. Wines from Satos own vineyard are not expected until 2018. Satos wines are atypically Central Otago; picked early with fresh acidity and perfect fruit ripeness, the wines are softer on the palate and more expressive of time and place than the more conventionally finished, over-worked and youthfully-aggressive wines of the region. These wines are more feminine in character and more elegant than most other wines of the region.Since 2014, Sato has been working in the vineyard at Northburn Station, taking care of the vines throughout the entire season. In addition to this, they also source organically grown fruit from a Pisa Terrace site: Annual production: 1,400 cases