2020 Kusuda Riesling Beerenauslese (375ml)

WINEMAKER: Hiro Kusuda
REGION: Martinborough, NZ
VARIETAL: Riesling
VITICULTURE: Sustainable

"Silken-textured dessert wine that impresses on many levels. Great intensity with layers of apricot, ripe tree fruits, exotic spices, rose petal, honey and a suggestion of mango. The sweetness is perfectly balanced by fruity acidity to give the wine a subtle sweet-and-sour tension. A wine with extraordinary length and power." - Bob Campbell MW

Tokyo-born Hiroyuki (known as Hiro) Kusuda trained as a lawyer and worked for Fujitsu, then the Consulate General of Japan in Sydney before giving it all up to pursue his other love, wine and winemaking. He went to Germany, learned the language, enrolled at Geisenheim and then emigrated to New Zealand to pursue both Riesling and Pinot grapes – to which a third challenge, Syrah, has now been added. The choice of New Zealand in general and Martinborough in particular apparently came about through tasting the 1992 Ata Rangi Pinot Noir.