Domaine des Miroirs Sonorité du Vent 2019 750ml

Kenjiro Kagami kept this 2019 in his own cave for years before letting it go, and his first instruction to buyers is to pull the cork the day before.

Sonorité du Vent, the sound of the wind, is the Chardonnay from the part of Kagami's single 3.2-hectare vineyard above Grusse where he judged the topsoil to be thin. The plot had been farmed until the 1950s, was then abandoned and swallowed by the forest that still encloses it on three sides, and has never seen herbicide. A second phrase is printed on the neck, Le voyage forme la jeunesse, a saying his former employer Gérard Schueller in Alsace likes to repeat: travel trains the young. Vinaiota, the domaine's Japanese importer, lists the 2019 at 13 percent alcohol under the Vin de France designation, with the lieu-dit Les Saugettes on the label.

In the note he wrote for the June 2026 release, Kagami says the late frost of May 2019 cut the crop hard, but the weather turned after the frost day and the damage was in the end smaller than in 2017, 2021 or 2024. What came out, in his words, is a wine of scale, the sun concentrated in it yet well balanced by acidity. Because of that scale he judged it better left sleeping in the cave after bottling, which is why the 2019 reached Japan only seven years after harvest. He would like to hold every wine this long, he adds, but the domaine cannot afford to; the frost-year 2021 Entre Deux Bleus was shipped young for that reason.

Winemaking at Les Miroirs is kept plain: wild-yeast fermentation without temperature control, old wood, bottling unfined and unfiltered. Oenopole, the Québec agent, gives the pattern for this cuvée as direct pressing, full malolactic, no added sulphur, two years in used casks and foudres and a year in bottle.

In the glass

The only critic note on the 2019 we found, Nicolas Greinacher's on Vinous, sits behind the paywall, so Kagami's own description stands in: concentrated sunlight held in check by acidity, a wine of scale that may seem unsteady in the first minutes after opening and settles as the hours pass. Rue Pinard, a Dutch merchant, describes the cuvée as pale gold, with orchard fruit, hay and a light oxidative spice over a taut, saline palate.

When to open

Kagami's instruction is specific: open it several hours ahead or the evening before; if that is impossible, decant slowly and gently one to two hours before serving. Our suggestion is to serve it cool rather than cold, around 12 °C.

At the table

Our suggestion: roast chicken with morels, a well-aged Comté, or poulet au vin jaune.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from the Japanese importer.

Sources: Kenjiro Kagami (release note via Vinaiota, June 2026); Vinaiota (Japanese importer); Oenopole (Québec agent); Rue Pinard; Vinous; Jamie Goode in Revista de Vinhos