Niimi, Okayama

It began as a result of an incident in Ryuta's construction business. While working in the construction industry, he saw an ever-increasing amount of abandoned local land. “Couldn't I revitalise this land with my own hands?” and in 2009, he entered the agriculture industry, something he had no experience in. He decided to start by growing fresh grapes on a 2 ha plot. He later learnt that there were no vineyards for winemaking or domaine-style wineries in Okayama at the time, and in 2016 he decided to establish a winery, saying that he wanted to "regenerate the land with my own wine". Over the last 10 years since entering the industry, he has now grown 8 hectares of grapes.

The town of Tetta, in the south of Niimi, where the winery is located, is situated on the upper reaches of the Takahashi River against the Chugoku Mountains. In winter, the temperature is low and the mountains are covered with good quality snow. Blessed with abundant nature, you can enjoy mountain stream fishing, including ayu (sweetfish) and amago (red-spotted masu trout), and agricultural products such as Chiya beef, New Pione grapes, white peaches and Momotaro tomatoes are specialities of the area. In autumn, the annual Dogeza Matsuri (festival) is an event of the Funakawa Hachimangu Shrine Autumn Grand Festival (15 October), and in winter it is a place where skiing can be enjoyed. The town of Tetta is located on a limestone karst plateau at an altitude of 400-600 m, with the town centre on a slight flat area.

The vineyards currently have about 16,000 vines for wine and table grapes. There are 30 varieties of wine grape varieties alone. Ten of these varieties are mainly used for winemaking, while the remaining 20 are grown for experimental purposes.

In order to maintain sustainable and economical vineyards, the vineyards are cultivated with reduced use of pesticides, no chemical fertilisers and no herbicides. Pesticides are applied at only one-third of the standard set by the government. Compared to regions in Europe and the New World, Japan has more rainfall and the effects of rain (especially in the rainy season) and temperatures (hot summers) can affect the yield in any given year. Therefore, in order to reduce these climatic effects and improve the growing environment, they use rain-shelter cultivation with covered vinyl, which is very rare in the world. In this way, the grapes are able to grow in a healthy environment, which also reduces the use of pesticides.

The reason why they are so thoroughly committed to “nature” is that they want to grow grapes with as little stress as possible. We continue to take an approach that allows the grapes to show their true potential. At the same time, however, this also means that the grapes need to be monitored without missing a single moment. Yoshiya, head of viticulture and winemaking, says: "We have to keep a close eye on the grapes”.

At the winery, they place great importance on drawing out the grapes' full potential in the winemaking process. For this reason, the process is carried out with as little human intervention as possible. The first distinctive feature is the timing of the grape harvest. Unlike most wineries, which harvest grapes in plots or rows, they observe the grapes bunch by bunch and pick only those that are properly ripe and of high sugar content. This inevitably means a longer harvest period, which is physically and mentally very demanding.

Yoshiya says, “I am always anxious. I fight the fear that something strange will happen to the wine. It must be rare in the world to be so nervous and take so much time to do this. I want to turn as many grapes as possible into wine".

The symbol of the winery is the panda, which is also depicted on the labels of its flagship Chardonnay wines. The panda figurine is in the vineyard, and was found in the vineyard when the company was rehabilitating abandoned land at the time of its establishment. Since then, the panda figurine has become a guardian deity of the vineyard.

Other labels also feature illustrations with plenty of characters. For example, the Cabernet Franc label features a boar that once vandalised a vineyard. The impact of the label is a good opportunity to engage in conversation with customers and to make them interested in the wine.