Food & Beverage | Best Japanese wine made from koshu grapes: white, sparkling

Mitsuhiro Anzo, chief winemaker of Chateau Mercian winery in Katsunuma

Inside a 19th-century silk merchant’s house in Katsunuma, Japan, about 70 miles west of central Tokyo, the three Aruga brothers are pouring several white wines in their timbered tasting room. All are made at their Katsunuma Jyozo Winery under the Aruga Branca label from the country’s unique grape variety koshu, and all are delicious: One is elegant and sparkling; another fresh, bright, and lemony; a third succulent and tangy; still another savory and smoky; and a fifth barrel-fermented version is round, rich, and smooth.

About 15 years ago, when an Aruga Branca bottling won medals in a French wine competition, Bernard Magrez of famous Bordeaux château Pape Clement was so intrigued, he proposed a joint wine project that introduced koshu to France. And now third-generation winemaker Hiro Aruga, who studied and worked in Burgundy, has joined his father, Yuji, and is experimenting to create wines with even higher quality.

Aruga Branca is part of the vinous revolution that’s making Japan the world’s newest serious wine frontier. Since 2010, koshu has been on the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) list of varieties, so it can be displayed on labels in Europe. And last year, to insure quality, government regulations were enacted to restrict labeling of Japanese wine to vintages made wholly in the country, from vine to barrel. The volume of exports went from 45,000 liters to 58,000 liters from 2015 to 2017, up almost 30%, according to the National Tax Agency. Ambitious vintners anticipate more demand during next summer’s Olympics.

Although many grapes are grown in Japan, wineries in Yamanashi, the most important of Japan’s four major wine regions and where Katsunuma is located, are betting on koshu. “The grape is ideal for Japan’s humid, rainy climate. It’s thick-skinned and resistant to rot,” says Aruga.

The vineyards, too, seem unique. At nearby Lumiere, which claims to be the oldest family-owned winery in Japan (established in 1885), koshu vines look like small trees, with branches spread-eagled on wires 6 feet off the ground to create a pergola. Folded paper hats are tied over hanging bunches like miniature umbrellas to shelter grapes from rain.

Japan’s enticing whites fit neatly with the latest global wine trends. Koshu wines have floral aromas, delicate, distinctive flavors (of yuzu, savory minerals), and naturally low alcohol levels (11% to 12%), and they’re exotic but not odd, like, say, Georgia’s rkatsitelli which hasn’t truly taken off. And, hey, the name koshu is easy to remember and pronounce. Plus, the wines are perfect matches with popular Japanese cuisine mainstays sushi and sashimi.

All this is why I recently spent a few days in Yamanashi, a 90-minute train ride from Tokyo. It’s home to 81 of the country’s 300 wineries and has a 1,000-year history of grape growing and nearly all Japan’s plantings of koshu.

My first stop, in pouring rain, was the local Daizen-ji Temple touted as the grape’s legendary birthplace 1,300 years ago, when a monk named Gyoki saw a vision of the Buddha of medicine holding a bunch of grapes, which led him to discover a grapevine.

The real story turns out to be only slightly less fanciful. DNA analysis at the University of California at Davis showed koshu is a hybrid of mostly vitis vinifera (the species of European grapes like chardonnay) and Asian grapes. Scientific consensus is that it came to Japan from the Caucasus via the Silk Road.

But for most of its history, pretty pink-skinned koshu was a table grape for eating. Only in the last 130 years has it been turned into wine.

“For most of that time the wines were sweet and reviled,” explains Ernie Singer, a Tokyo wine merchant, who produces Shizen sparkling koshu on Mount Fuji and has been a key player in reorienting Japan’s wine industry. Along with other koshu boosters such as Château Mercian and Shigekazu Misawa, the intense owner of Grace Wine, Singer enlisted the help of Bordeaux white wine wizard Denis Dubourdieu as a consultant 15 years ago. Now almost all koshu is dry.

As Misawa drove me around his vineyards in the northwest part of Yamanashi, he pointed out ways he’s been experimenting to improve quality. He’s planted vineyards at higher elevations and in neat rows like those in Europe instead of the traditional pergola. He says that helps boost ripeness during wet summers and results in more body and richness in the wines. He founded organization Koshu of Japan, which began holding annual tastings in London in 2010.

His daughter Ayana, who studied in Bordeaux and is now the winemaker, hand picks and sorts grapes meticulously. She’s pioneering making koshu from single vineyards with different terroirs, from volcanic soil to slate. She ages most of them in oak, but she says “you have to be careful, especially with oak, because koshu aromas are very delicate.”

The big Japanese drinks companies—Kirin, Suntory, Sapporo—all have wineries in Yamanashi. Château Mercian, now a member of the Kirin group, was the first to make a dry koshu on the lees and turned to both Dubourdieu and the late Paul Pontallier of Château Margaux for help in making more elegant wines. Suntory, famous for whisky, actually began as a wine company more than 100 years ago.

From its vineyards you have a panoramic view of the valley surrounded by densely forested mountains including a glimpse of snow-capped Mount Fuji. Both make excellent wines from familiar Western grapes like sauvignon blanc and merlot, as well as koshu. Elin McCoy, Bloomberg