In the popular imagination, Hokkaido, the most northerly of Japan’s main islands, is a winter wonderland of heavy snowfall, ski resorts and ice-sculpture festivals. It seems an unlikely place to grow grapes and imbibe local wine.
However, Hokkaido lies along the same latitude as southern Europe and has a relatively mild climate with little damage from typhoons, a fact that has inspired growing numbers of vineyards, including one led by a producer from Burgundy.
Set in the hilly volcanic soils above the port of Hakodate, De Montille & Hokkaido is the first foreign-owned winery in Japan. Established in 2017, it now cultivates pinot noir and chardonnay across 15 hectares, with another 15 set for planting. Its first vintage, from the 2024 harvest, will ship next year in 7,000 bottles.
The De Montille & Hokkaido winery in summer
“Now you have many young winemakers establishing themselves not only in Hokkaido but also in the southern part of Japan,” Étienne de Montille of Domaine de Montille told The Japan Times. “I think it will take another five to ten years for Hokkaido’s wine scene to reach world-class standards.”
Winemakers in Japan are hoping to repeat the success of whisky distillers. During the past 20 years, whisky from Japan has captured some of the industry’s most coveted awards and there has been such demand that distilleries ran out of stock. Domestic wines have captured accolades in the Decanter World Wine Awards and may be on the threshold of serious growth.
Aside from Hokkaido, vineyards are concentrated in Yamanashi and Nagano; much of the rest of the country is too wet and snowy, with short growing seasons and limited available land. Despite this, during the past ten years the number of producers in Japan has doubled to about 500, according to Jancis Robinson, the wine critic for the Financial Times.
Winter conditions in Hokkaido can be challenging
On her first visit to Japan in six years, Robinson tasted white wines made with koshu, a white wine grape variety. It is a cross between Vitis vinifera, the common grape vine, and a wild Chinese grape, yielding a profile between riesling and sémillon.
“It makes rather neutral, refined dry whites that seem to me to go especially well with sashimi because they can have a similar purity, but there has been a move to imbue the wines with more flavour by reducing yields,” Robinson said.
Muscat Bailey A, Japan’s main domestic red grape, is a hybrid of Vitis vinifera and Vitis labrusca bred for Japan’s climate. It produces “attractively fruity wines that can smell rather strawberry-like,” said Robinson, who found them “generally very charming even if not particularly suitable for long-term cellaring”.
Robinson tried 24 Japanese wines, rating two thirds 16.5 out of 20 points. Five of those were from Hokkaido, including two from the coastal town of Yoichi, known for its Nikka whisky distillery, founded in 1934. It now has 72 wine grape growers cultivating more than 160 hectares.
One is the star grower Takahiko Soga, whose Nana-Tsu-Mori pinot noir was the first Japanese wine to make the wine list at Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant once considered the finest in the world. That sparked such intense demand that it has been called the world’s rarest wine.
“I want to move people, give them a sense of nostalgia,” Soga told The Japan Times. “Above all, I look for an almost unsettling amount of umami in the long finish.”