Domaine Yui T2 MV Pétillant Rosé 2025 750ml

Domaine Yui usually bottles its forty-year-old Portland vines alone; for this release the Sugiyamas blended in barrel-aged Pinot Noir from their A vineyard and labelled the result MV.

Tetsuya and Aya Sugiyama, classmates at university in Hokkaido, moved to Yoichi in 2017, bought their land in 2018 and were licensed in autumn 2020. The domaine is at 812 Nobori-cho and farms two sites. Farm A, in Nobori, is laid out as an A for Aya: about 3 hectares of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris on vertical trellises. Farm T, 2 hectares in the Kurokawa district and shaped as a T for Tetsuya, came with old pergola-trained table grapes from the previous farmer: Delaware, Portland and Campbell Early. Each label names the plot.

This is T2+A: Portland from block 2 of Farm T, where the labrusca vines are more than 40 years old, joined by Pinot Noir from blocks 1 to 3 of Farm A. According to Yamajin, the base is the 2025 T2 Pétillant Blanc Portland, blended with a red from the A-vineyard Pinot Noir aged 18 months in barrel, which is why the label reads MV rather than a year. Harada Shoten quotes the domaine's sheet at 60% Portland and 40% Pinot Noir, grown without pesticides, first fermentation on wild yeast and the second in bottle on dried yeast, 9.5% alcohol, roughly 2,600 bottles. The 2025 Portland came from a season the domaine called unprecedented: véraison more than a week early, heat, rainfall and sunshine all at record levels, and the T-vineyard harvest pulled forward to the last weekend of August.

The Sugiyamas say they are not chasing hard-line natural wine and do not put ideology first. They mechanised destemming because it is quicker and so less oxidative, which lets them use less sulphite. On the labrusca pétillants they are plain-spoken: the grape is often called juice-like, but made sparkling and low in alcohol it is, in their words, something to drink from midday in a hot Hokkaido summer in place of beer. This year, they add, there are two cuvées with Pinot Noir blended in, each with its own character.

In the glass

The domaine's note, as quoted by Harada Shoten: acerola and cranberry, with added depth from the aged Pinot Noir, which they call a grown-up sparkling wine. Sommelier Yuto Fukuda at Yamajin finds rose and strawberry over a savoury base, with a gentle bead. Pale salmon in colour, crown-capped, with some lees in the bottle.

When to open

The domaine, via Harada Shoten, asks that the bottle stand so the lees settle, then be served well chilled. Our suggestion: drink within a year or two.

At the table

Yamajin's pairing: salmon and cherry-tomato marinade. Our suggestion: sashimi or cold chicken.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from a local distributor in Japan.

Sources: Domaine Yui (Instagram @domaineyui: profile, Mountain Day 2026 wine list, pétillant release note, 2025 harvest and véraison posts; label); Harada Shoten; Yamajin (Y. Fukuda); Cave de Relax (interview with the Sugiyamas)