10R Winery Dry Rosé Nokofuku 750ml

10R Winery — pronounced “to-aru” — is the Iwamizawa, Hokkaido cellar of Bruce Gutlove, the American winemaker who spent two decades as head of Coco Farm & Winery in Tochigi before planting his own vines in Hokkaido in 2010 and opening 10R in 2012. It was built as a custom-crush winery: local growers bring their fruit and make their own wines under Gutlove's guidance, and out of that workshop came a generation of the island's most talked-about producers. 10R's own bottlings are few and rarely seen outside Hokkaido.

Nokofuku Rosé, from the winery's Tireman Series, is a one-off dry rosé the cellar had never made before and may never repeat: mostly Pinot Noir with a little Zweigelt, pale in colour, energetic and bone-dry. Strawberry and a balsamic, black-tea edge over a forest-floor savouriness — an unusually serious rosé for the table, and a small piece of Hokkaido wine history from the man behind so much of it.

Cuvée: Tireman Series Nokofuku Rosé (NV)
Producer: 10R Winery (Bruce Gutlove)
Region: Iwamizawa, Hokkaido, Japan
Grape: Pinot Noir, Zweigelt
ABV: 13%
Volume: 750ml