This wine is a joy, and we think it’s as good as New Zealand Pinot Noir gets. Ripe strawberry and cherry aromatics are beautifully intertwined with notes of mushroom, thyme and damp bark. It’s the texture and structure in the palate, with its dry, savoury but fine tannins, that separates this from the rest. It's a very complete and complex Pinot. Hand harvested fruit from the Sato home vineyard in Pisa was wild yeast fermented with 14% whole bunches for between 26 and 29 days. The wine was aged in French oak barrels for 19 months and bottled without fining or filtration.

In a short space of time, Sato Wines have gained quite the following, and with good reason, the wines  are so thoroughly engaging. Established in Central Otago in 2009, Yoshiaki and Kyoko Sato produced their first Pinot Noir with purchased organic fruit. In 2016 they planted their own 3.2 hectare vineyard in Pisa, in the Cromwell Basin. From the outset they’ve had a very clear vision for how they want to produce wine. 

“We believe grape vines need to be grown in an organic way, preferably a biodynamic way, and grapes have to be transformed to wine with minimal intervention by human hand, chemicals or additives. In this way, we consider a natural microbiological balance is maintained in the vineyard, and the wine in process in the winery so that the real character of the terroir, where the grape vines grow, is truly expressed in a pure manner”.