A truly unique offering!
Dear Friends,
No need to rush and order before reading. Your allocation is saved for a couple days. This is the first time we are utilizing a tiered system based on prior orders - and you are first. Thank you for the ongoing support, our Kobayashi Ninjas!
I’m trying to keep this short - since less than 300 (big) bottles of this wine were produced. But starting a story when something (or someone) is born sometimes misses the context, importance and meaning - so bear with me.
2026 Rarities and B-sides are coming soon, which will be a few more special wines that also all happen to be from single barrels (between 228 liters and 600 liters), the offer will be Roussanne in the barrel made with wood submerged in the ocean, 2022 Extended barrel aged Syrah (blue label), 2023 Mizunara Cab Franc, and maybe one more - still deciding if it is ready. That email will go out in about a month, but today we have one very special wine. We were planning to include this in the single spring wine release, but this wine is so unique that we (actually Mario) felt it warranted its own offer letter. For all of the spring wines we will give a first offer to people who have been our long time supporters, or purchased a mizunara wine in the past, but borrowing a great idea from our friend Adam at Floodland Brewing, we will always save some wine for a public release. I languished for years on winery waiting lists in the past with no morsel of hope to try the wine. We would like to at least give everyone a chance… This is the first time we are utilizing a tiered system, each will last a couple days before opening for others, so if you want the wine - please do not hesitate to order or it might be gone.
Before we get too far into this labyrinth of an offer, please know that our usual annual release set of wines (the mixed case) that we will send an email about in June or July will not change prices of $65 for whites and $85 for reds. Our goal is for those prices to remain the same for as long as we continue making wine.
The timeline of making wine is all about patience and perseverance. The only immediate gratification is finding personal satisfaction in the tedium of the daily work (which thankfully I love). When vineyards are planted, they are for the next generation. Distance, time, culture, bureaucracy, language and so many more things were overcome to bring these bottles home - for you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I had a spark and idea in 2022, now in 2026 it is tangible and materialized.
Life is but a dream.
2023 Caberlot X Kobayashi Collaboration.
It is tough to know where to start with this. I guess back at the beginning. I have been buying one magnum of Il Caberlot made by the Tuscan producer Il Carnasciale every year for over 10 years; it is one of my favorite wines. They only sell wines in MAG format (1.5 liters - the equivalent of 2 bottles), the story is that they are the only people in the world to grow a spontaneous hybrid of cabernet franc and merlot (hence caberlot). This variety was discovered in a small Italian grapevine nursery in the '80s. And they planted the vines at a very high density of 10,000 vines per hectare on a tiny organically farmed plot on a beautiful mountaintop in a forest in the middle of nowhere of Tuscany. The whole story feels somewhat mysterious and fantastical, and believe me when I say that when you are winding through the forest on a dusty bumpy road there is a sense that you are departing from the physical world that we are accustomed to and being transported into a dreamland or some kind of psychedelic journey. The wine continues down this path and is really something out of this world, it is in fact a singular expression and highly sought after by wine lovers all over the world, especially the wine explorers seeking something exotic and beautiful - like you.
While I was happy for the well-deserved 100 point score for their 2018 Caberlot from Antonio Gallonio from Vinous, it also made me a little sad, because I knew prices would increase and my ‘unknown’ discovery I loved sharing with people now had a spotlight on them. It already happened when he gave my favorite Barolo, the whole cluster Burlotto Monvigliero, a hundred points - price went crazy and it became tough to find - bummer. I visited Carla-Elle and Moritz at their estate in 2022, but I had actually met Moritz in Seattle several years prior at a Slow Wine event - at which time I was already a huge fan of Caberlot wine. The point of the event was to slow down and consider what was in your glass, how it was made, and meet the people behind it. Sometimes when I meet someone I have an immediate sense of comfort - I felt that with Moritz and over the next several years I thought of him with irregular regularity. I enjoyed opening his wines, sharing them, telling his story and the entire experience even more after meeting him. My friend (and for sure the person I have tasted the most excellent wine with) Dr. Steven Maxood has coined the term and pontificated something called “Human Terroir”. Terroir being the geologic and climatic conditions that make a wine unique, but he feels the human aspect of knowing, or having met the person can influence how much you love and experience even more than the wine itself. I’m not sure why, but it feels like Kobayashi and Il Carnasciale have a lot in common - because on the surface we have nothing in common. Their familial history is Polish, they reside in Paris and Italy, they make Italian wine. But, they are doing something out of bounds, they are pushing quality and have carved into a new territory. I felt a connection when we met in 2017, and a true kinship when we met again in 2022. While I was tasting at Caberlot, I mentioned that their label design “X” is the international symbol for collaboration, something stirred in me at that moment and I asked Moritz if he might be interested in doing a collaboration with his unique grape variety in one of our unique Japanese Mizunara Oak Barrels. He paused in thought for what felt like an eternity, and simply said “That could be very interesting.”
That was in the summer of 2022, fast forward to over a year later and 100s of daily emails to get a once-used Japanese barrel through European Union customs, Mario and I went to their estate in Italy to blend this wine we are offering today. . In November 2023, right as the wines were finishing up fermentation, we did trials of blending Caberlot blocks and Sangiovese into the Caberlot varietal. 1 and 2 percent - minimal impact. 3 percent Sangio was excellent, 4 + made the wine diffuse into abstraction. So this is the only European wine made in Japanese Mizunara oak (as far as i know) and the only wine ever made with Caberlot and Sangiovese blended together. We wanted the wine to stand alone, not just Mizunara and our blend, but they had never blended their Sangiovese with their Caberlot - we thought it was worth a try…and it definitely adds another dimension.
This collaboration wine somehow shows an absolute harmony. The piney, cedar and incense qualities of the Mizunara marry perfectly with the savory pepper, dark fruit and herbal Caberlot aromas. The wine has a refreshing acidity, balance and is so good it invokes an emotional response - the thought did cross my mind to keep them all for myself! I like wine more than money, but I like marriage and wine even more, and Mario would surely split if I kept a pallet of Caberlot collab wine.
Anyway, the label is also a collaboration of Kobayashi and Caberlot aesthetics. Our colors, their font and theme, with a few letters from Mario’s Kobayashi font.
We apologize in advance if we run out of this wine. As we feel with all of the wines, we hope all of you have the chance to try this special and delicious experience. It is a dream come true for me in the sense that I’ve been loving these wines for over a decade, and now we are working with their wonderful family, and have a collaboration wine with them.
There are 300 hand numbered magnums. The price is All-In and the same for pick-up at our Milton-freewater location, or delivery or shipping included. $595 per magnum.
The highest compliment you can give a winemaker is to buy their wine and drink it with friends. I don’t really want people to collect our wines - much rather you enjoy them and have them become part of your celebratory memories. That being said, we were just visiting our daughter in London last month, and the restaurant where we were having dinner happened to have the 2000 Caberlot available by the glass. It was excellent, showing that these wines can age gracefully. With your magnum, the time will be right for you to open when the right people are around - anytime in the next 25 years or longer.
Thank you so much for supporting our small family winery. We put everything we have into our wines and appreciate all of you cool people who continue to spice up your life and love and friendships with a bottle of Kobayashi.
Happy for the team, tho - it’s such a great story.