Japanese Wine Industry(I)

1. General knowledge of Japan

Japan is located eastern fringe of China and runs across north-east to south-west over a distance of some 3000km. Northern part of Japan belongs to the Frigid Zone, and southern part of which belongs to the Tropical Zone. In spite of its lengthy, width is very narrow, then land is only 370 thousand sq m. Population of Japan is 120 million, making the 6th largest nation. Population density of Japan is not far from UK, but most of Japan is mountainous and the area of available land is extremely limited. Then actual density is more than 1700/sq km. This makes incredible land prices, in recent report, residential land price in Tokyo is about A$4900/sq m, 45 times as New York and 14 times as London. Actually this crazy price is only limited metropolitan area, but even in country, land prices is expensive and moreover, available land is extremely limited.

Japan is monocultural country. It makes you easy to understand consumer behaviour. Preference of Japanese also follows in narrow range. Therefore, it can easy to make a boom of something. But the boom cools down easily, too.

Major religion is Buddhism. But it is not as strict as other Buddhism country such as Thailand and India. We also celebrate Christmas, Valentines day.

Japanese speak only Japanese. Although we learn English in school, few Japanese can speak it frequently. Actually, in a trading company, they use English in business but sometimes, you would realize that it is difficult to communicate with Japanese in English.

2. Japanese wine production
2.1. History

Legend has it that grape-growing began at Yamanashi, where is major wine and grape produce region now. Wine may have been made from local grapes in Yamanashi in early times and consumed very locally. Yamanashi has the least rainfall and less fatalities soil, therefore rice can not be grown in Yamanashi. It is not difficult to assume that people live in Yamanshi compelled to drink wine instead of rice wine called "sake" which is more popular alcohol beverage.

In 1875, the first commercial winery was established in Katsunuma, Yamanashi, which is now a part of Mercian winery which is the second largest company in Japan.
2.2 Viticulture

Japan is not naturally suited to viticulture and successful viticulture has always been a struggle. There are 3 major problems in Japanese viticulture.

High humidity and rainfall during growing season,
acidic and fertile soil and
limitation of lands.

Climate and Geography

Major grape growing region belongs to monsoonal climate. As Mt Fuji provide rain shadow effects in Kofu Valley, Yamanshi has the least rainfall in Japan. But it still has excess 1000mm annual and 800mm rainfall during growing season. Especially, flowering season, in June and early in July is a monsoon season, this causes serious downy and powdery mildew problems. Worthily, just before harvesting, in September, we have typhoon season, sometimes it causes wind damage as well as bunch rot problems.

Excess water and fertile soils makes vine vigorously, grape quality can be reduced without careful yield control. The high number of rainy days make reduce sunshine hours. Wide daily and seasonal temperature range and enough temperature summation indicate the availability of full maturation. However, the lack of sunshine hours causes unbalance for growing. Usually we should pick up grapes at Baume 9 to 11. After this level, flavour increases and acidity is reduced but Baume cannot be increased moreover, bunch rot and rain damage could be aware. Japanese law states that wine can be chaptalized and acidified. Usually we do not need to add acid but use a large amount of sugar in winemaking.

Traditional Japanese vineyard is trellised with overhead system to avoid excess humidity from soil and get good spray precipitation. This is specially important for table grapes to avoid scratch and get uniform ripening but not necessary for wine grapes. The overhead trellis is labour intensive and need trained skill for pruning. Planting density tends to low and this increases vigour to vines. New vineyard was trellised narrow T or Layre and get better results with high density planting. We should to try various trellis and planting materials to find the most suitable conditions in our own vineyards.

This will require major alternations to vineyard practices. But the structure of industry militates against rapid progress. There are more than 80,000 grape growers in Japan. The average vineyard size is around 0.25 hr in Yamanashi. Even in Hokkaido, where the scale of viticulture is greatest, the average vineyard is only slightly more than 0.5ha. Many grape growers are old and difficult to try something new. Recently some wineries encouraged vineyard reconstruction. Small wineries such as us grown grapes, make and sell our own wine. Some have been responsible for seriously interesting possibilities for Japanese wine quality and , as small scale operations, our outcomes are more readily visible.

Variety

Since last century, many grape varieties were introduced from Europe and US and tried to grow, select and propagate. As American varieties tended to tolerate to rain and diseases, they have been increasing. Cross hybridization between American varieties and European varieties were also proceeded and several cultivers were widely spread.

In 1995, total vineyard in Japan is 23,000 ha and produce about 250,000 t grapes. Only 8% of them was used for winemaking.

The most significant of these, and most important variety in winemaking is Kosyu, which is widely believed for the first cultiver in Japan. Kosyu is a Vitis venifela variety and has adapted our climate. It bears big round pink berries and is produced white wine. Almost Kosyu wine is designed dry to semi dry and medium to light body style. Commonly we made Kosyu as aromatic style, without oak. Because Kosyu has high phenolic contents in the skin, it tends to be overfined and become less body and simple style. Some of winemaker hate Kosyu because of its simplicity, but personally, we believe Kosyu is the original Japanese variety just like Kelner in German, Shiraz in Australia, and want to try many way of winemaking and viticulture techniques to Kosyu. Some of young winemakers try to lees contact, oak fermentation, oak maturation and success to get more complexity in Kosyu wine.

Another white wine grape is Delaware, which is an American variety and gives foxy flavour in wine. The wine is aromatic and sweet style. After fermentation, it is fined and bottled immediately then placed on the market in a few month after harvesting. They wish to be sold out this in several months. While we did not have significant red varieties. Traditional variety is Muscat Bailey A which is an American hybrid and more suits for table grape. Most wineries produce light bodied sometimes even semi-sweet style fruity red and rose wine from Muscat Bailey A. Carbonic maceration is sometimes used for it. Of course such wines should be consumed without aging.

In spite of many difficulties, since last decade, we have been trying to grow European varieties, such as Chardonnay, Cabernet sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot, with new trellis system. I have tasted some of their wines last year, and found that Cabernet Franc and Merlot showed good balance in fruits flavour and tannin structure.

In Hokkaiodo, they can grow good quality Muller-Thurgau and Riesling, and produces German style dry white wine.

2.3 Industries

Only holders of license issued by the Ministry of Finance are permitted to make wine. Now there are about 230 wineries in Japan. Top 3 wineries are MERCIAN, SUNTORY and SAPPORO.

Since 1980' when Japanese wine consumption increases rapidly, many of the large wine companies have concerned to improve the quality of wine, in order to keep their market share against imported wine.

Initially, they had focused on investment in modern wine making equipment and on training their winemakers in the methods used in the major wine producing nations. Suntory bought Ch. Lagrange in St Julien and Robert Weil in German. Some other companies bought Californian wineries as well. The domestic industry has also tried to hold its ground by using imported grape concentre even blend domestic wine with imported bulk wine to extend and improve its quality. Here is a trick in the label law. The definition of Japanese "Domestic wine" is the wine which bottled in Japan. Then it can be divided into three categories, Wine made from only domestic materials-kokunaisan, wine fermented in Japan using imported materials-kokusan and bottled in Japan using imported wine-yunyu. If theses 2 or three entitles are blended, then the exact proportions of each have to be shown on the label. Japan Winery Association adopted to remove ambiguity , yunu wine should be declared to the origin of them.

These labeling law may make consumers confuse, and small winemakers has proposed that the only wine made from domestic materials can state Domestic Wine and others should not use Domestic on the label. However, large companies refuse it. In turn, we have adopted a Certificate of Origin for the limited regional wines. This system seems well working and small producers wine become differentiated by consumers.