Tomi, Nagano

Through some of the world’s best-known grape varieties, the distinctive character of Japanese wine comes into view.

Yone Farm TOMI is a wine project founded by Toshinori Yonekura in Tomi, Nagano Prefecture. Across several estate vineyards in the city, he grows around fifteen European grape varieties, including Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Syrah and Viognier.

Toshinori’s aim is not to recreate France—or any of the world’s renowned wine regions—in Japan. Instead, he explores how internationally recognised varieties, whose characteristics are familiar to wine drinkers around the world, express themselves in Tomi’s climate and soils. This potential is examined vineyard by vineyard, variety by variety.

Japanese varieties such as Koshu and Muscat Bailey A offer a direct expression of what makes Japanese wine distinctive. Yone Farm TOMI, however, works mainly with varieties that are familiar to European wine drinkers and therefore provide a natural point of comparison.

And it is precisely this familiarity that makes the differences so revealing.

Even when the grape is Sauvignon Blanc or Cabernet Franc, the scale of the fruit, acidity, gentle bitterness and restrained alcohol differ from those found in France and other regions. By beginning with grapes we already know, the wines of Yone Farm TOMI invite us to experience how the land of Japan transforms their expression.

Toshinori’s relationship with wine began long before he started growing grapes.

After being introduced to wine by a knowledgeable senior student at university, he spent more than 35 years tasting wines from around the world. He travelled through France, Italy, Spain, California and New Zealand, experiencing firsthand how the same European grape varieties can produce dramatically different aromas and flavours depending on where they are grown.

While the fundamental characteristics of a variety may remain recognisable, climate, soil, elevation, viticultural practices and the choices of the winemaker all shape the resulting wine. Yone Farm TOMI has its origins in Toshinori’s long experience as a wine drinker—one who spent decades observing and considering these differences.

Toshinori worked for a major telecommunications company for 25 years. Despite having built a stable career, the experience of natural disasters and wider social change led him to reflect on how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. He began to wonder whether he could turn his genuine passion for wine into his profession and avoid looking back with regret.

Yone Farm TOMI is not a project that began with vineyards passed down through generations. It began when a devoted wine drinker—someone who had spent many years tasting the world’s wines and learning about the places and cultures behind them—brought his own palate and questions into the vineyard.

Located in eastern Nagano Prefecture, Tomi is one of the principal wine-producing areas of the Chikumagawa Wine Valley. Its vineyards and residential areas extend across elevations ranging from approximately 500 to 1,000 metres. The region enjoys abundant sunshine, relatively low rainfall and pronounced differences between daytime and night-time temperatures. It has long been recognised as a favourable area for growing grapes and other fruit.

The elevation and diurnal temperature variation help the grapes retain acidity and aromatic freshness as they ripen. The fruit receives ample sunlight during the day, while temperatures fall at night. At a time when climate change is driving many of the world’s wine regions towards greater ripeness and higher alcohol, Tomi offers the possibility of combining full fruit maturity with freshness.

Toshinori’s estate vineyards are not concentrated in a single location. They are spread across several parcels in Tomi, including Nezu-Midō and Kurakake-Kanai. His approximately four-hectare vineyard in the Nezu-Midō wine-grape growing area occupies part of a terraced slope at an elevation of between 760 and 780 metres.

Not all of the vineyards, however, share the same elevation, slope or soil conditions. Each parcel has its own environment and is planted with different grape varieties.

Rather than defining the “terroir of Tomi” through a single set of conditions, Yone Farm TOMI grows grapes in contrasting parcels and continues to observe how they respond. For Toshinori, the diversity of his vineyards is not an inconsistency to be eliminated, but the starting point for understanding the possibilities of this place.

His focus also extends well beyond the current vintage. He is thinking about the wines he will make over the next twenty or thirty years, trusting that the work being done in the vineyards today will be reflected in the fruit and wines of a decade from now.

The names of some Yone Farm TOMI wines evoke the traditional regions and blending cultures of France, including Bordeaux and the Rhône. The intention, however, is not to imitate their places of origin.

Even when working with Bordeaux varieties, Toshinori does not pursue concentration and power alone. When using Rhône varieties, he does not aim for excessive ripeness or high alcohol. Instead, he draws on the relationships between grape varieties established through centuries of classic winemaking, then reworks them into a new balance suited to fruit grown in Tomi.

The inspiration may come from France, but the answers are left to the vineyards of Tomi.

A single-variety wine can communicate the relationship between a grape and its vineyard with great clarity. Combining several varieties, however, can create harmony and depth that no single grape could achieve on its own.

One variety may provide aroma, while another contributes acidity. Some bring richness and weight to the fruit; others support the tannins or lengthen the finish. Toshinori approaches the different varieties as if they were musical instruments, bringing them together into a single ensemble according to the character of the fruit harvested each year.

Blending is not a means of reproducing a fixed recipe from one vintage to the next. It is also a way of responding to vineyards that change each year and expressing the resulting fruit in its best possible form.

Changes in grape composition or vinification are not signs of inconsistency, but an honest response to each vintage. The approximately fifteen varieties—sometimes on their own and sometimes complementing one another—trace the different contours of Tomi.

To taste several Yone Farm TOMI wines is to gradually read the map of Tomi that Toshinori draws through its vineyards and grape varieties.

In the cellar, spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts is the norm, and the wines are generally neither fined nor filtered. Small amounts of sulphur are used when necessary, with care taken not to place undue stress on the grapes or must, or to obscure the character developed in the vineyard.

Yet describing YONE FARM TOMI simply as “natural wine” does not fully capture its essence.

Low intervention is not an end in itself. Instead, the method is chosen according to the needs of each parcel of fruit and each blend. Stainless-steel tanks may be used to preserve fresh acidity and varietal definition, while older barrels may help bring together the fruit and texture of multiple varieties. Decisions regarding malolactic fermentation and filtration are likewise made according to the acidity and texture desired in the finished wine.

The wines are not forced into a single method or stylistic formula. Toshinori observes the fruit each year and chooses the approach the wine itself requires. This flexibility brings together a deep understanding of classic wine and respect for the fruit produced by the vineyards.

The wines of Yone Farm TOMI offer complexity without excessive weight.

Rather than pushing aroma and fruit to the forefront, they seek a balance in which acidity, umami, gentle bitterness and restrained tannins support one another, allowing the wines to be enjoyed naturally throughout a meal. They combine an understanding of France’s traditional wine culture with a sensitivity suited to the Japanese table.

This does not mean that the wines pair only with Japanese cuisine. They fit just as naturally into everyday European meals, accompanying vegetables, fish, chicken, pasta and slow-cooked dishes. Rather than seeking the kind of power that makes a wine complete in itself, they are intended to support the table as a whole—without overwhelming the food, conversation or flow of time.

Yone Farm TOMI does not represent the entirety of Japanese wine. Japan encompasses a wide range of climates, grape varieties and cultures, and every producer arrives at a different answer.

Nevertheless, for anyone interested in discovering how internationally recognised grape varieties change when grown in Japanese soil, Yone Farm TOMI offers an ideal point of entry.

Rather than encountering Japan through an entirely unfamiliar grape, these wines invite us to look again at varieties we already know, this time through the lens of a different place. In doing so, the subtle scale of Japanese wine, its closeness to the land and its relationship with food come clearly into focus.

Familiar grapes reveal an expression of Japanese wine you have yet to discover.

That is the reason to experience the wines of Yone Farm TOMI.

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to share my wines with people across Europe through GUBI GUBI. It brings me great joy to know that wines made from grapes grown here in Tomi, Japan, will travel across the sea and be enjoyed by people so far away.

I hope that as many people as possible will enjoy the wines of Yone Farm Tomi, and that they will become part of many wonderful moments around the table. I hope you enjoy my wines and the moments that come with them.”

— Toshinori Yonekura