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Lumiere Ishigura Muscat Bailey A 2020

Light and jammy, the popular choice
Muscat Bailey A
  • $62.00

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Red Fruit and Pepper / Spice,

BODY: Medium
DRYNESS:
Dry
ACIDITY:
Medium -
TANNIN:
Medium -
ALCOHOL (%):

Origin: Yamagata, Japan

Grape Varietals:
Muscat Bailey A

Winemaking:

Maturation:

Awards:

WESTERN FOOD PAIRING
Baked pork belly, braised duck leg, salted cod fishcakes

ASIAN FOOD PAIRING
Tuna sashimi, Teriyaki chicken, dashi-poached fish in sweet-soy Japanese style, braised abalone with steamed Bok Choy

Description

Lumière Ishigura Muscat Bailey A 2020

Lumière Ishigura Muscat Bailey A is a light tasting wine made from one of Japan's most popular wine grapes. Ruby red colour. The nose opens with pleasant strawberry and pickled ginger aromas. The palate has an elegant structure and soft tannins with notes of red fruits and vanilla over a jammy body.

Fun Fact: Muscat Bailey A is a hybrid with a complex genetic heritage. It was created by crossing Muscat of Hamburg with Bailey, itself a little-known crossing whose family tree includes Triomphe and two interestingly named American hybrids, "Big Berry" and "Extra". Muscat of Hamburg (also known as Black Muscat) is a dark-skinned variety used more commonly for table grapes than wine production. Today, Muscat Bailey A is one of Japan’s most popular wine grapes.

100% Muscat Bailey A. Surrounded by mountains and rivers, Yamanashi is the most spectacular vineyard region in Japan. Lumière's main vineyards are very special, located in areas with alluvial soils and decomposed granite rocks, which provide great drainage. The vineyards are cultivated using grass cover crop and no-tillage systems. This enhances the true nature of the grapes, allowing the wines to express their utmost potential.

All the grapes are harvested by hand, then are hand-sorted on a sorting table and gently deposited into the destemmer. A gravity-flow system is utilised to bring the wines down naturally from the fermentation tank to the ageing barrels without mechanical pumps.

The wine ages in traditional underground granite stone tanks (Ishigura) that were constructed in 1901. A total of 10 such fermenters were built, with an underground passage running through 10 such units, side by side. Built with the purpose of holding large quantities of wine, each fermenter can roughly hold 10,000 litres. In 1998, the Ishigura fermentation tank was officially certified as a tangible cultural property of Japan and designated as a key component of Japan’s cultural heritage in 2018. This unique winemaking method involves plenty of manual labour, from using handcrafted bamboo drainboards as a filtration device to getting underground to drain out the final wine from the mouth of the stone storehouse.