2012 Kusuda Wines, Riesling, Martinborough

2012 Kusuda Wines, Riesling, Martinborough

Product: 18671
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2012 Kusuda Wines, Riesling, Martinborough

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Description

This is one of the most exciting and pure Riesling wines that we have recently tasted from New Zealand. A textbook of elegance, fruit definition and subtlety. Beautifully perfumed with exotic jasmine florals, vivid, refeshing acidity, and masses of underlying fruit extract. About 300 dozen made. This should open up with bottle age.

Hiroyuki Kosuda has won critical acclaim internationally for his range of wines made in the well-established wine-producing region of Martinborough, east of Wellington. Kosuda has built a reputation for terroir-driven, pure, elegant Pinot Noirs. His wine-making is characterised by painstakingly careful sorting of the fruit, to the point that he personally inspects the harvested grapes one by one and sorts out any berries that are unripe or showing the slightest damage. The Riesling is whole bunch pressed, then fermented in a stainless steel tank for 4 weeks.

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About this WINE

Kusuda Wines

Kusuda Wines

Tokyo-born Hiroyuki (known as Hiro) Kusuda trained as a lawyer and worked for Fujitsu, then the Consulate General of Japan in Sydney before throwing it all up to pursue his other love, wine and winemaking. He went to Germany, learned the language, enrolled at Geisenheim and then emigrated to New Zealand to pursue both the Riesling and Pinot grapes – to which a third challenge, Syrah, has now been added. The choice of New Zealand in general and Martinborough in particular apparently came about through tasting the 1992 Ata Rangi Pinot Noir.

Obviously the main market for Kusuda is Japan, where they have developed a cult following, and indeed whence comes the volunteer labour force at harvest time when every grape is rigorously checked before making the cut. Hiro Kusuda is meticulous to an almost fanatical degree, but it explains the exceptional quality and amazing precision of his wines. The Kusuda Pinot Noir was one of the standout wines at the 2013 Pinot Noir Celebration in Wellington, NZ.

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Riesling

Riesling

Riesling's twin peaks are its intense perfume and its piercing crisp acidity which it manages to retain even at high ripeness levels.

In Germany, Riesling constitutes around 20% of total plantings, yet it is responsible for all its greatest wines. It is planted widely on well-drained, south-facing slate-rich slopes, with the greatest wines coming from the best slopes in the best villages. It produces delicate, racy, nervy and stylish wines that cover a wide spectrum of flavours from steely and bone dry with beautifully scented fruits of apples,apricots, and sometimes peaches, through to the exotically sweet flavours of the great sweet wines.

It is also an important variety in Alsace where it produces slightly earthier, weightier and fuller wines than in Germany. The dry Rieslings can be austere and steely with hints of honey while the Vendages Tardives and Sélection de Grains Nobles are some of the greatest sweet wines in the world.

It is thanks to the New World that Riesling is enjoying a marked renaissance. In Australia the grape has developed a formidable reputation, delivering lime-sherbet fireworks amid the continental climate of Clare Valley an hour's drive north of Adelaide, while Barossa's Eden Valley is cooler still, producing restrained stony lime examples from the elevated granitic landscape; Tasmania is fast becoming their third Riesling mine, combining cool temperatures with high UV levels to deliver stunning prototypes.

New Zealand shares a similar climate, with Riesling and Pinot Gris neck to neck in their bid to be the next big thing after Sauvignon Blanc; perfectly suited is the South Island's Central Otago, with its granitic soils and continental climate, and the pebbly Brightwater area near Nelson. While Australia's Rieslings tend to be full-bodied & dry, the Kiwis are more inclined to be lighter bodied, more ethereal and sometimes off-dry; Alsace plays Mosel if you like.

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