Domaine Takahiko Yoichi Nobori 2024 750ml

Soga calls the 2024 fruit from his contract vineyard in Nobori the best it has given him in years, then asks you not to open the bottle before January 2027.

Yoichi-Nobori is the line Takahiko Soga makes from grapes he buys rather than grows. The domaine's own definition is wine made only from fruit grown in the Nobori district of Yoichi, bought from vignerons he respects, and because it is not estate fruit the label reads simply Takahiko Soga, not Domaine Takahiko. The 2024 front label gives the address as 1395 Yoichi-Nobori, Hokkaido-Japon. The Passetoutgrain comes every year from the same contract-farmed Nobori vineyard, and Soga's release note says the 2024 crop was the highest-quality fruit that site has given him in several years.

The model is Burgundy's Passetoutgrain, with Zweigelt standing in for Gamay. Soga describes Zweigelt as Yoichi's representative red grape, with a powerful frame and the open, generous fruit he associates with Gamay, and he says the blend carries more colour, tannin and fruit than his Nana-Tsu-Mori Pinot Noir. For 2024 the blend is 70 percent Pinot Noir and 30 percent Zweigelt, a ratio he calls ideal; the 2023 had run to 40 percent Zweigelt. Fermentation was 100 percent whole cluster with wild yeast in resin tanks, held at a lower temperature and run slowly because recent harvests have been warm, with the Zweigelt extracted gently. Twelve months in used barrels followed, and 4,000 bottles were filled at 12.0 percent alcohol. Yoichi's 2024 season recorded a heat summation of 1,468, second only to 2023, with fine weather after flowering and relatively little rain between véraison and harvest; it was also the year the domaine installed air conditioning in the fermentation room and built an underground barrel cellar.

Soga settled in Yoichi in 2010 after a decade at Coco Farm in Tochigi. In a March 2024 interview the Hokkaido Shimbun put the domaine at 4.5 hectares planted and roughly 20,000 bottles a year, with exports begun in earnest in 2021.

In the glass

Soga's own note puts blueberry and plum at the front, then chestnut, licorice, cherry, green tea and cinnamon, with the wild-yeast ferment building what he calls a layered forest character; the finish is long, carrying umami and a pleasant bitterness. He is blunt that the tannin is firm and the wine hard in youth. Cave de Relax, the Tokyo retailer, lists it as medium-bodied.

When to open

Soga asks that the bottle stay closed until January 2027, with 2030 the ideal; he has drunk Yoichi-Nobori Passetoutgrain past ten years of age and reports it had turned into something splendid.

At the table

Our suggestion: game birds, duck with plum, or mushroom dishes that answer the licorice and forest notes Soga describes.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from a local distributor in Japan.

Sources: Domaine Takahiko (takahiko.co.jp wine list and 2024 label); Cave de Relax / THE CELLAR online store; Harada Shoten; Hokkaido Shimbun (10 Mar 2024)