Escarpment, founded in 1998 in Martinborough's Te Muna sub-district of the Wairarapa, built its reputation on estate-grown Pinot Noir. Kupe is made entirely from the winery's home block on Te Muna Road, first planted in 1999, where close spacing on gravel-and-silt river terraces channels the Abel clone into a wine of perfume and drive. The site's free-draining soils, dry autumns and wide day-night temperature range encourage slow, even ripening and fine tannin. The 2022 vintage in Martinborough yielded a refined, distinguished Kupe, described by critics as more polished than the exuberant 2021, with a deep core of red and black fruit, firm tannin and length that rewards cellaring for up to two decades.

Kupe is hand-picked from the Te Muna home block and fermented in open-top vessels with hand-plunging and a portion of whole bunches, following Escarpment's Burgundian-influenced approach that favours perfume and savoury complexity over weight. Wild-yeast fermentation and gentle extraction preserve the wine's lifted, fragrant character. After pressing it is matured about 20 months in French oak barriques, with 42% new wood on the 2022, a proportion critics noted is well absorbed and hard to detect. The wine carries a firm but fine tannin structure that frames opulent fruit, and is built for long ageing. Bottling follows the estate's minimal-intervention practice.