If you were a young winemaker in Japan looking for somewhere to plant vines, you might do what a good number of them have done and head north to Hokkaido.
The land is cheaper, for one thing. For another, the island largely misses the early-summer rainy season and the typhoons that tend to reach the main islands just as the grapes are getting somewhere. You could call that a lifestyle choice, but anyone who has watched a harvest go under a week of rain would call it common sense.
The rest of Japan isn’t so lucky. Ripening grapes on an archipelago of monsoons and typhoons is hard, unglamorous work, and in a bad year the weather has the final say.
When the grapes do make it, the best Japanese reds have a freshness and delicacy that’s hard to find elsewhere, along with more intensity than their pale colour lets on.
I should admit that you’re unlikely to come across many of them. Little Japanese wine leaves the country, because the Japanese drink the bulk of it themselves, which seems fair enough. If you’ve seen a bottle abroad, it was probably Koshu, a soft, finely textured white, often so pale you could mistake it for a glass of water. The reds have traditionally been on the light side too, though growers are now getting riper fruit, thanks to better site selection and more European varieties in the ground.
So how are those varieties getting on? I tasted reds from three wine regions in Japan at a masterclass hosted by Wines of Japan UK, all from the 2015 vintage and each from a different prefecture.
Tsurunuma Zweigelt 2015, Hokkaido Wine Company, Hokkaido
Hokkaido Wine Company has been at it since 1974, with some German winemaking influence in its early years, and they’ve chosen their grape sensibly. Zweigelt, an Austrian crossing of St Laurent and Blaufränkisch, is soft and juicy and ripens early, which is what you want when the season is short and damp. This one has fresh, delicate plum and red cherry and a clean, spicy finish. There’s nothing showy about it, and nothing missing either.
Merlot Cuvée Masako 2015, Kusunoki Winery, Nagano
Nagano has taken its wine seriously for some time. It set up its own appellation system, the Nagano Appellation Control, in 2002, and when Japan eased the rules for small wineries in the early 2000s, people like Shigeyuki Kusunoki took the chance to start small estates of their own. Nagano is Japan’s best-known region for Merlot, and if, like Miles in Sideways, you have firm views on Merlot, this one might soften them, since it drinks more like Pinot Noir. It’s a pale, fragile ruby with good intensity on the palate, made with minimal intervention and low sulphur.
Cabernet Franc 2015, Grace Wine, Yamanashi
A confession: I went into this one with expectations. Grace Wine, from Yamanashi, Japan’s largest wine region, is one of the country’s best-known wineries abroad, and I’d enjoyed their Koshu on several occasions. The question was whether their red could keep up. Koshu has been grown in Yamanashi for over a thousand years, according to local tradition, so Cabernet Franc is very much the newcomer. In structure it sits nearer to Saumur than Bordeaux, and it’s more delicate again, with ripe berry fruit, soft tannins from gentle extraction and a light touch of oak spice, tobacco and vanilla.
What I noticed most was what wasn’t there. It had none of the green, unripe character Cabernet Franc shows when the season hasn’t been kind, and given the weather these growers work with, that tells you a fair amount about the effort behind it. The winemakers heading north to Hokkaido, it seems, aren’t the only ones finding ways around the typhoons.
I tasted these wines at a masterclass with Sarah Abbott MW, hosted by Wines of Japan UK at 67 Pall Mall, London, in October 2018.
Archive note: this post was written just as Japan’s new labelling rules came into force in October 2018, reserving the term “Japan wine” (Nihon wine) for wine made entirely from grapes grown in Japan.
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