Beau Paysage Tsugane La Montagne Merlot 2006 750ml

Beau Paysage is the natural-wine domaine of Eishi Okamoto in Tsugane, Hokuto, at the foot of the Yatsugatake mountains in Yamanashi. Okamoto planted his first vines here in 1999 and has farmed them ever since without chemicals and with almost no intervention in the cellar, making wines that read as a direct transcription of place and season. Production is tiny, allocations are personal, and the wines have become the most sought-after in Japan — rarely seen outside the country and almost never with age.

La Montagne is the domaine's Merlot from the Tsugane vineyard, and the wine on which its reputation was built. This 2006 comes from Beau Paysage's earliest years, before the domaine's own cellar in Tsugane was completed in 2008 — a bottle from the period when the style was first taking shape. Now twenty years old, an early La Montagne offers something almost never available: a mature Japanese Merlot from a cult natural grower, with the savoury, forest-floor complexity that only time gives.

Vintage: 2006
Cuvée: La Montagne
Producer: Beau Paysage (Eishi Okamoto)
Region: Tsugane, Hokuto, Yamanashi, Japan
Grape: Merlot
Volume: 750ml