Tomi, Nagano

Domaine Nakajima is a winery founded by Yutaka Nakajima in 2014 in Tomi, Nagano. Tomi is also part of the Chikumagawa Wine Valley, one of the areas where Nagano promotes the wine industry.

When Yutaka was a businessman, he attended cooking classes organised by Le Cordon Bleu, a world-renowned culinary education institution, as a hobby. He became interested in wine as he bought wines to match the dishes he made there. He also attended wine school and eventually qualified as a wine expert. Around that time, he visited a hill of vineyards in Saint-Émilion, Bordeaux, and thought, "If only I could spend the rest of my life in such pleasant vineyards", which inspired him to become a winemaker.

He then moved to Tomi in 2009. Since then, he has trained at Domaine des Bois Lucas in France, which is owned by Junko Arai, a winemaker who makes wines that he likes, as well as at the Bernhard Huber in Germany and Coco Farm & Winery in Tochigi. These wineries were mainly wineries that vinified with wild yeasts.

Domaine Nakajima's vineyards are located in Tomi, which is said to be ideal for growing wine grapes due to low rainfall and large temperature differences during the day. Most of them have strong clay soil and steep south-facing slopes at an altitude of 850 metres, making it impossible for tractors to get inside, so most of the work is done by hand. The family, including his wife Michiru, work together.

Currently, the vineyards are mainly planted with European varieties such as Cabernet franc, Sauvignon blanc, Merlot, Chenin blanc, Savagnin and Pinot noir.

The model for the label of their wine “Petillant Rosé” is a wild bird hatchling from a bird's nest built between the branches of the Chenin Blanc. The fact that wild birds nest in the vineyards tells us that the vineyards are so environmentally friendly and safe. At the moment, the winery only produces a few thousand bottles of wine each year from its own vines, but it has 1.5 ha of its own vineyards and can produce 5,000 bottles of wine when the vines get mature.

Table grapes have a high water content, so the water content should be reduced to intensify the flavour. To achieve this, they must be picked late or dried in the shade. Late picking is difficult, given the stress on the grapevines. He wants to make a cloudy wine with lees so that the wine does not taste thin. He wants it to be sparkling so that its lees are stirred throughout. He also wants to make a wine without additives, with spontaneous fermentation, so that it has the gentle taste he likes. He couldn't think of a better Kyoho wine, and that's what he came up with Petillant Naturel Rosé 2014.

From there, Yutaka repeated the trial and error process every year until now. At first, the grapes were crushed by foot only through plastic, but the grapes were too hard, so from around 2016, he built a grape crusher with materials from a home improvement shop, which has been used every year with slight improvements. This crusher only produces a single crack in the grape skins, so after the crushing, he crushes the grapes moderately with boots.

A hydraulic basket press, which was introduced in 2015, has been used for pressing and the outer frame was changed from wooden to stainless steel in 2021. The juice soaked into the wooden frame during the day-long pressing process, so for hygiene reasons he changed to stainless steel because he thought it was safer to use. He felt that the taste had become somewhat cleaner. Improving the tools is one of Yutaka's pleasures.