Beau Paysage Tsugane Le Feu 2021 750ml

Fire, the third of four banners: Le Feu is the blended red in Beau Paysage's wind, forest, fire and mountain set, and the 2021 is bottled at 12 per cent.

Eishi Okamoto came to Yamanashi in 1999 and planted 0.7 hectares of Merlot at Tsugane, in Hokuto, on a slope at about 800 metres; his own licensed cellar followed in 2008. He calls his four reds le vent, le bois, le feu and la montagne. A bistro owner in the district, unpacking the 2009 releases in April 2011, set them out in the order of Fūrinkazan, the wind-forest-fire-mountain motto Takeda Shingen once flew over this same province of Kai. Le Feu is the fire, and its label keeps the swallowtail butterfly crest shared by most of the range.

What goes into the fire has never been printed on the bottle. Older bottlings show the pattern: a restaurant pouring the 2004 in 2009 wrote down Merlot 74, Cabernet Franc 14, Cabernet Sauvignon 6 and Petit Verdot 6, and a Kamakura bar listed those four grapes again for the 2014. For 2021 we have found no statement from the grower on varieties or shares, and the back label reads only 'grapes (Japan)', so we leave the blend unstated rather than guess.

Okamoto told Bert Celce of Wine Terroirs, on a visit in December 2015, how his reds are made: berries pulled from the stems by hand, roughly four weeks on skins in steel tanks with no cooling and no added gas, a small basket press, then twelve months in barrel. Some ten parcels, about three hectares, are farmed without a plough. On this bottle the back label carries his sentence in English and Japanese, 'A glass of wine can change the world', next to the 1% for the Planet mark, and names the cellar at Kurahara in Takane-cho.

In the glass

No producer tasting note for the 2021 has been published. Two earlier bottles give the outline: the 2009 restaurant note on the 2004 found the wine nearer to Pinot Noir than to Merlot, its scent arriving in waves, and a Tokyo food writer said much the same of the 2018 over sushi. The declared 12 per cent alcohol of the 2021 points to that lighter frame again.

When to open

Our suggestion: from now to around 2032. Stand the bottle upright for a day, decant shortly before the meal and serve at 15 to 16 °C.

At the table

Our suggestion: yakitori seasoned with salt, duck breast, or shiitake grilled over charcoal; the moderate alcohol lets it stay beside the food.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from a local distributor in Japan.

Sources: Beau Paysage front and back labels (2021 bottle); beaupaysage.com (archived 2023); Wine Terroirs (B. Celce, Dec 2015); Bistro Mille Printemps blog (Apr 2011); gcpt restaurant blog (Mar 2009); winy.tokyo / Sosan; espace.livedoor.biz (Le Feu 2018); Kurotan wine blog