Japanese wine is surging in reputation: ‘We seem to have created a cult.’

“I don’t understand it,” says Takahiko Soga, bemused, “why are so many people obsessed with my wine?” The maker of “world’s rarest wine” is sitting in an outhouse on his winery within the tiny city of Yoichi, Hokkaido Prefecture. Since Soga’s Nana-Tsu-Mori 2017 classic made it onto the wine record at Noma in 2020, demand for his wines has skyrocketed. He’s not the one one.

“I don’t know how, but we seem to have created a cult,” chuckles Bruce Gutlove, proprietor of 10R Winery in Iwamizawa, Hokkaido. Gutlove’s Kaze, a pinot noir, was lately known as “best red wine in the world,” by Noma’s head sommelier, who included three of 10R’s wines at its newest Kyoto pop-up. Gutlove and Soga are simply two of the numerous Japanese winemakers who’ve seen their wines lauded by the worldwide wine group.

“Japanese wine just keeps growing in popularity and quality,” says Akiko Shirato, an authorized sommelier and purchaser at Imadeya, a Japanese alcohol importer/exporter. The statistics communicate for themselves: In 2024, the Japanese wine market hit $30.2 billion, and is forecast to achieve $44.8 billion in below a decade. The variety of wineries has practically doubled up to now 10 years, to virtually 500 throughout Japan.

Standing wine bars are arising all through the nation, introducing fashionable metropolis dwellers to boutique Japanese wines. Online, oenophiles talk about the thrill of Japanese wine, of grapes grown on distinctive terroir, wishing to go to and pattern them for themselves (Japan solely exports a really small share of its wines). Japanese wines are showing on wine lists on the world’s most interesting eating places, from these on the Top 50 record to others with Michelin stars. In this 12 months’s Decanter World Wine Awards, Japan was highlighted for its robust illustration. But it hasn’t all the time been like this. 

From copycat to trailblazer

Japan has an extended historical past of constructing alcohol from grapes, fermenting its Koshu selection to make a drink known as budoshu (lit. grape liquor). The first time that the nation turned its focus to winemaking was within the 1870s (Meiji Period), when it reopened its borders and was subsequently uncovered to European oenology. 

Until the Eighties, Japan’s early winemakers heat-pasteurized their wines, and tried to repeat the farming methods utilized in Europe and the United States. “They were adding tremendous amounts of SO2 … the wines tasted acrid,” Gutlove remembers. The Eighties is now touted as a revolution in Japanese winemaking, with an enormous half performed by Gutlove; he’s generally known as the “godfather of Japanese wine.” 

In 1989 he became a consultant at Coco Farm & Winery in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, moving into a full-time role in 1994. The winery is notable because its underlying aim is to provide work for those with intellectual disabilities, rather than making wine. “We had a lot of freedom,” says Gutlove. “As long as we made a profit, I could do whatever I wanted.” 

It was this independence that allowed him to experiment, refining Japan-specific rising methods in keeping with its distinct terroir. Gutlove’s arrival additionally marked altering attitudes in a brand new technology of winemakers. “(We) understood that we did not have to be bound to make the same wines that were being made overseas … This is Japan. The aesthetics and food culture are completely different,” says Gutlove.

Flavor appreciation

In 1994, Gutlove started a group called Japan Young Wine Growers Association, where the merits of particular wines would be strongly debated and dissected. Members included Soga; Kazuto Kuwabara, who now runs the popular winery, Terre de Ciel, in Nagano Prefecture; Ken Sasaki of Nora Kura in Hokkaido; Tsuyoshi Kobayashi of Kyoeido in Yamanashi; and Koki Oyamada of Domaine Oyamada in Yamanshi. Gutlove acted as a mentor to many of Japan’s younger winemakers, taking them on study trips overseas and hosting tastings and seminars, with the underlying question: How could they make wines that reflected Japan? 

The answer was there all along: “Umami.” A phrase that comes up time and time once more when describing the prevalence of newer Japanese wines. This distinctly refined taste profile is near-impossible to succinctly describe and arduous to discern. Umami in Japanese wines comes from vineyards with low manufacturing—one defining characteristic of lots of Japan’s top-rated winemakers. In Yoichi and its neighboring Nikka, as an example, there are 25 wineries, but solely three of those produce over 10,000 bottles of wine per 12 months, making the bulk classifiable as “micro-wineries,” best for producing umami-tinted wines.

Soga, from Domaine Takahiko, goes one step additional. “My wines have notes of dashi (fish stock),” he says. He recommends consuming them to accompany Japanese washoku dishes equivalent to dobin mushi, a teapot of steamed soup. 

Global consideration turns to Japan’s wines

Since Soga left Coco Farm in 2010 to begin his personal vineyard, he’s been producing umami-rich pinot noir that has enthralled the wine trade. Gutlove stays a director at Coco Farm, however left the location to begin his personal customized crush vineyard in 2009, with Ryoko Gutlove, a former Coco Farm worker. 

Soga and Gutlove have been among the many first low-intervention (pure) winemakers in Hokkaido, inspiring a slew of different vintners to make the transfer. Several, equivalent to Mongaku Valley Winery, have been immediately influenced by Soga and Gutlove.

Gutlove’s 10R additionally operates as a customized crush web site, serving to winemakers by offering winemaking services. “We make wine together, and they learn how to use the equipment,” says Gutlove. Graduates of 10R embrace Nora Kura, Domaine Toi, and Domaine Bless, now extremely regarded wines in their very own proper. There are actually customized crush services in different wine-making areas, equivalent to Nagano and Yamanashi.

Other vineyards have been immediately impressed by the duo’s ardour for low-intervention, biodynamic wines, like Domaine Ichi in Yoichi. Domaine Ichi is a One hundred pc-certified natural winery, operated by viticulturist Ichiro Ueda. Ueda is the proprietor of one of many first wineries within the space, however moved to pure wine in 2020, after learning winemaking with Soga. He established Domaine Ichi for the aim of sharing fully natural, low-intervention wines. 

Wines all through Japan

While the proliferation of the wines is especially novel in Hokkaido, different components of Japan are eager to showcase their wine-making acumen, and deserve a point out. Many key gamers within the Japanese wine scene throughout the nation—equivalent to Domaine Tetta by Ryuta Takahashi in Okayama Prefecture; Shigeyuki Hirayama from 98Wines in Yamanashi Prefecture; and Katsuki Wines in Miyazaki Prefecture—all produced their first vintages up to now decade.

Yamanashi

Yamanashi Prefecture is thought for its conventional Japanese wines made utilizing the native Koshu grape. It boasts some notable wineries, such because the tiny Beau Paysage, whose grapes are handpicked at excessive altitudes, and 98Wines. These wines, and extra, are served within the Japanese institutions on the latest World’s Best eating places record, equivalent to Sevanne, a Tokyo-based neo-French restaurant that took seventh place this 12 months. For these eager on vineyard excursions, Yamanashi’s lengthy historical past of wine means there are a large number of excursions on supply, like Chateau Mercian, which launched a brand new wine vary in 2022.

Nagano

In Nagano Prefecture, the vineyard commerce is booming; this space is residence to the best focus of wineries within the nation, at 88 in 2025. The Shinshu Wine Valley Initiative was fashioned in 2013 and adopted it in 2023 with its “2.0.” Miyuki Katori, a wine scholar, journalist, and co-director of the Japan Vineyards Association, recommends Chikumagawa, a wine valley close to Tomi City. On weekends, wine lovers can tour the wineries through bus, and dine at eating places and wine retailers like Tomi Wine Chapel and Villa d’est. Some wineries even present bespoke lodgings, equivalent to Gio Hills Winery, began by the son of a ryokan (Japanese inn) proprietor.

Tochigi

Coco Farm, now headed by Toyoichiro Shibata, flies the flag for Tochigi. The vineyard produces a variety of wines, together with dry, medium-bodied reds with blackcurrant and floral aromas, made utilizing grapes from its Ashikaga and Sanno fields. Visitors to the vineyard are handled to wine excursions and effective meals at its on-site restaurant. 

With such a wealthy crop of home-grown wines, it appears that evidently, lastly, Japanese wines have turn into international gamers in their very own proper.