2013 Sato Pinot Gris (Skin Contact / Orange Wine) Central Otago

Notes

If there was a boutique producer in New Zealand that resonated with the micro-production, experimental, semi-hipster, natural, "culty" wines that have taken California by storm in the last few years, Sato would be it. Yoshiaki Sato and his wife Kyoko have quickly made a name for themselves producing some of the most highly talked about and sought after wines in NZ. While travelling in NZ last year many other winemakers I met were really quite jealous that I had managed to pry a few cases of each wine away from Yoshi (who's wines have very quickly become highly allocted and available only to mailing list customers). The wines are essentially "natural wines". Yoshi sources only from organically farmed sources, he refuses outright to use any added yeast, enzymes etc etc. None of the wines are subjected to fining or filtration. The only thing these wines see is a tiny addition of minimal Sulphur pre-bottling. They are pure expressions of place and season. They are made in miniscule quantities (often just a couple barrels - 100 +/- cases). Note this wine contains notable natural, harmless sediment.