Domaine Takahiko Nana-Tsu-Mori Blanc de Noir 2020 750ml

In 2020 noble rot swept through Takahiko Soga's Pinot Noir just before picking, and he made more Blanc de Noir that year than ever before.

Nana-Tsu-Mori Blanc de Noir is a still, dry white made only from Pinot Noir berries touched by botrytis, picked one by one on the domaine's Nana-Tsu-Mori vineyard in Nobori, Yoichi. How much exists depends on the noble rot: when it fails to appear, output falls sharply and some years nothing is bottled. Since 2022 the domaine no longer releases it as a single vintage, blending years into a multi-vintage cuvée instead, because warmer seasons now bring far less botrytis.

The 2020 season in Hokkaido opened well. Spring and flowering were kind, the vines set heavy bunches and the crop was large. Then September turned hot, with record average temperatures, and grey rot broke out just before harvest. For the red Nana-Tsu-Mori that meant careful sorting; for this cuvée it meant the largest volume the domaine had yet produced. 2020 was also the year Soga changed his method. Earlier vintages had juice from healthy grapes added before fermentation to keep sweetness and alcohol in check; from 2020 he fermented the botrytised fruit on its own, aiming for a dry wine with weight. Through a picking window of about two weeks the berries soaked cold, were pressed on the final day, fermented on wild yeast and then spent about a year in old barrels. 2,300 bottles were filled.

Soga, second son of the family behind Obuse Winery in Nagano, worked ten years as farm manager at Coco Farm Winery before founding Domaine Takahiko in Nobori in 2010. The 6.7-hectare Nana-Tsu-Mori vineyard was once an orchard of seven kinds of fruit trees, which gave it its name; it is farmed organically, and in 2020 it grew nothing but Pinot Noir. On its own website the domaine calls the Blanc de Noir the hardest of its wines to get hold of.

In the glass

The domaine's 2020 release note, reproduced by the retailer Yokokawa Shoten, lists nuts, honey, mint, citrus, truffle, butter, roasted Tianjin chestnut, white peach, amber sugar candy, black tea and orange marmalade. It points to real acidity and high alcohol that, oddly, never reads as heat, a very soft entry, firm minerality and a long finish.

When to open

Soga asked buyers to keep his 2020 releases closed until January 2023 and named four or more years of bottle age as ideal. Six years on from the harvest, that mark has passed.

At the table

The domaine suggests cheese, chicken liver, shabu-shabu and tempura, and says the wine also works with Japanese and Western sweets.

Quick facts

Sources: Domaine Takahiko (takahiko.co.jp wine list and estate page); the domaine's 2020 release notes as reproduced by Yokokawa Shoten; Nanamori Saketen (retailer)