Kusuda Pinot Noir 2023

Kusuda's origin story is one of the most compelling in New Zealand wine: Tokyo-born lawyer Hiroyuki Kusuda tasted a 1992 Ata Rangi Pinot Noir and was so moved he abandoned law entirely, retrained in viticulture and oenology at Geisenheim University in Germany, and by 2001 had leased an unirrigated Pinot vineyard near Martinborough to chase the same magic. His approach borders on the fanatical: every single grape is hand-sorted, often berry by berry, with the help of twenty to thirty friends who fly in from Japan at their own expense each vintage purely to help with the harvest. The fruit is 97% destemmed, cold-soaked for four to six days, fermented in open stainless-steel vats with a combination of pumping-over and hand plunging across a long 22-to-25-day maceration, then aged fifteen months in French oak barriques (around 19% new) before bottling unfined. Production across his whole range is minuscule — often just 3,000 to 4,000 bottles a vintage — and a third of it disappears straight to Japan, where he's built a genuine cult following. It's routinely cited as the most expensive Pinot Noir made in Martinborough, yet critics have consistently scored it in the low-to-mid 90s across two decades of vintages.

The result carries a rare seamless combination of intensity and weightlessness — earthy, savoury notes of beetroot and sous-bois meet cherry and cranberry, with supple tannins that seem to almost disappear on a long, lingering finish.