Grace Cuvée Misawa Rouge 2019

Grace Winery (Chuo Budoshu) was founded in 1923 by Chotaro Misawa in Katsunuma, Yamanashi Prefecture, the birthplace of Japan’s wine industry. The winery has a history of innovation, being one of the first to introduce modern techniques like Vertical Shoot Positioning (VSP) in 1990 to enhance grape quality. Today, the winery is run by the Misawa family, with the current winemaker being Chotaro’s great-great-granddaughter, Ayana Misawa. The winery is committed to the philosophy that great wine comes from high-quality grapes grown in exceptional vineyards. They focus on traditional Japanese craftsmanship while also implementing progressive, modern techniques to enhance quality and reflect the unique terroir of the Katsunuma region. Grace Winery is considered a benchmark for quality in the Japanese winemaking community. 

Merlot (fruitiness),Petit Verdot (spices) and Cabernet Franc (elegance) , carefully grown on the Misawa Vineyard, are each vinified in small batches, separated by lot and variety until just before bottling, and matured in French oak barrels for 15 months. The grapes are brought to the winery immediately after harvest, where they will undergo a two-stage sort process and spontaneous fermentation. After maturation, the wine is bottled without fining or filtration. The grape variety composition depends on the year’s performance, with no wines produced in years when the weather was not favourable. 

Vintage 2019
Vine growth went smoothly from April to June, with little rain and plenty of sunlight. In other parts of the Yamanashi prefecture, there were rainy days in July, and August was cloudy, but the influence on Misawa Vineyard was limited, and impact on grapes was minimized via proper management. In September, the lingering summer heat was scorching, and fine weather persisted, enabling the slowed maturity period due to the late arrival of summer to catch up. Record typhoons and heavy rains struck the Japanese archipelago from mid- to late October, but fortunately damage was modest, and we were able to wait for proper ripening before harvest. By taking care of our vineyards meticulously up to harvest, we were able to enter harvest in the best possible conditions. Acidity levels were generally high for the 2019 vintage, and the resulting wines were tight with tension

THE WINEFRONT

Grace Cuvée Misawa 2019 – 94+ / 100 Points

There’s quite a lot of sweet oak here, plenty of cedar, cinnamon and cardamom, yet no shortage of raspberry, blueberry and cherry fruit. It’s medium-bodied, the raspberry coulis flavour rides the wine (is it Cabernet Franc dominant?), and then it falls spicy and oaky, but the bright fruit keeps its head above the oak, and there’s a cool ‘mineral’ character that mitigates that oak, and lets it stay bright and trim. There’s some coffee bean on a silty tannin finish of excellent length. It’s very good, and while I’d rather it had less oak, I get that for a ‘premium’ wine, that’s maybe the brief, or intent. Serious business, anyway.

– Gary Walsh (Jul 2023).