Producers
Due Punti Vineyards
‘Due Punti,’ meaning ‘two points’ in Italian, a reference to the two main points in winemaker Shinsuke Isaka’s philosophy: ‘Quality First’ and a ‘Wide Perspective.’ Isaka keeps these goals front and center as a constant reminder on how to make ‘high quality wine’ to drink every day.
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RO_Vineyard
Takayuki Maezawa, under the label "Ro_ Vineyards," farms vineyards in the Chikumagawa Valley, working to support his community through high quality agricultural products and good wine. Like other partner producers in the portfolio, Maezawa is a member of the group of winemakers to go through the Chikumagawa Wine Academy and revolutionize the wine industry in Nagano. And he now farms multiple sites in the southeastern part of the valley, along the high altitude reaches overlooking the river and townships below.
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North Creek Farm
After retiring from professional careers, Ayako and Masamitsu Suzuki decided to enroll in the Chikuma River Wine Academy and learn how to make wine. They founded a 2.5ha farm near the banks of the Yoichi River where they planted 4000 vines from seedling. The site sees little rain, a constant sea breeze, and relatively low humidity. Their goal is to make transparent wines that showcase terroir.
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Torocco Winery
The focus of Torocco is to protect the land and to “aim for cultivation rooted in nature,” using the transparency of sustainable farming and low intervention winemaking that both protects and showcases the land they love.
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Chateau Kiri
Chateau Kiri sits on a beautiful plot of land at the foot of Mt. Kurikoma, not too far outside the Tohoku city of Sendai, in Miyagi Prefecture. And everything they do is for their community. The project was founded in 2017, winemaking kicking off in the vintage of 2022. Since the beginning, they have committed to cultivating and fermenting grapes in a way that pays the utmost respect to the local ecosystem. That means avoiding chemical sprays in the vineyard and eschewing any addition in the cellar of any kind. The goal being to produce wines that treat the environment the same way as they treat the body of those consuming the wine – with care and respect.
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Fujimaru Winery
Osaka became a cradle of grape cultivation in Japan, when the first plantings of Delaware grape took root around 120 years ago. That foundational history makes Osaka one of the earliest centers of viticulture and vinification in Japan. But the encroachment of urban development and existing trends in migration from areas of agrarian vibrancy has led to the impending abandonment of ancestral and historic vineyards. Tomofumi Fujimaru, who owned a wine shop in Osaka, saw the threat of this viticultural history fading away, and took over an abandoned plot in 2010 to help stem the tide.
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Fattoria AL FIORE
Fattoria AL FIORE is a farm and winery established in 2015, located in the peaceful town of Kawasaki in Miyagi Prefecture, at the foot of the Zao Mountains. Surrounded by fields, rice paddies, mountains, lakes, and a warm, close-knit community, the town offers a tranquil setting that leaves a lasting impression on those who visit.
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Domaine Nakajima
Yutaka Nakajima, an engineer by trade, decided to attend classes at Le Cordon Bleu to learn more about cooking. Unexpectedly, it was the wine pairings he learned to make with his dishes that changed the trajectory of his life. He realized what a life in wine could lead to and he moved to Nagano to learn how to make wine. With local education and apprenticeships abroad – he left to pursue training in the Loire, in Baden, before returning to Japan to work at Coco Farm in Tochigi – Nakajima decided to found his own estate up on the steep hills overlooking Tomi City and the deep Chikuma River Valley.
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Domaine Hase
Mitsuhiro Hase came to winemaking after a career in the music industry, working for a major Japanese record label. But after an inspirational wine tasting in Nagano in 2012, moonlighted in Nagano on the weekends to study wine. He ripped the band-aid off in 2014, and moved to Tomi, Nagano to join the inaugural class at the Chikumagawa Valley Wine Academy.
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Tomorrow Wines
Minoru Tamura, founder and winemaker of Tomorrow Wines, owned and operated a yakiniku restaurant in Kyoto for years, specializing in Wagyu beef, as well as high quality organic produce, and served natural wine from France and Italy to pair alongside. But he wanted to produce his own wine locally that complimented the food he was serving. So he enrolled at the Chikuma River Wine Academy, a new wine school in the Chikuma River Valley in Nagano, and learned to make wine. And he wanted to grow grapes in Nagano, the area being relatively better suited for vinifera due to its low rainfall compared to the rest of Honshu.
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