Jun 13,2024
Natural factors such as the amount of sunshine and soil and topography are critical for growing wine grapes. Nagano Prefecture has vast swathes of land offering all the right conditions. In 2013, it launched the Shinshu Wine Valley Initiative Promotion Council (Shinshu being the old name of Nagano). Thus began a collaborative effort by the prefectural government, municipalities, industrial and commercial associations, tourism associations, and universities to promote “Nagano wine,” as wine produced in the prefecture is termed under the initiative. Nagano’s vineyards expanded steadily in the subsequent decade, and the number of wineries more than tripled from 25 to 81. The boom continues today as more people nurture ambitions of becoming winegrowers or setting up their own winery. In 2023, the Shinshu Wine Valley Initiative 2.0, which lays out a road map for the next ten years, was launched. The chair of the council charged with overseeing the initiative was assumed by Narusawa Atsuto, one of those who had made good on their dreams of establishing a winery — in his case, in his hometown of Sakaki. Here he looks back on how he got where he is today. We also asked him what Nagano wine aims to accomplish in the future.
Atsuto started working at a food services company in his twenties and wanted to have his own place by his thirties. In 2009, he opened Osteria Gatto, an Italian food and wine restaurant in the city of Nagano, with his brother-in-law Koide Katsunori, a chef specializing in Italian cuisine. Having qualified as a sommelier a year earlier, he had definite ideas about what to include on the wine list.
“We didn’t just stock French and Italian wines but many Nagano wines as well. Though I’d always been a wine lover, I didn’t know much about Nagano or Japanese wine before I qualified as a sommelier. There was this thick textbook for the sommelier exam, and while it had lots to say about alcoholic beverages in general and French, Italian, Spanish, and German wine, Japanese wine was only mentioned on the last two pages. It wasn’t even on the exam, so I didn’t give it much thought. People were really impressed when I got my qualifications as a sommelier, but as far as I was concerned, all I’d done was pass a test. I didn’t know how wine was actually made, right? That won’t do, I thought, so I started visiting wineries all over the prefecture to learn more. Nagano Prefecture had long been famous as a supplier of grapes to the big winemakers. But in terms of wine, it was strongly associated with the kind of sweet wines you see at souvenir shops. On the other hand, there were long-established wineries that made wine of remarkably high quality — Goichi Wine and Izutsu Wine in Shiojiri, for example, and Obusé Winery in Obuse. When I first went to a tasting at Obusé Winery, I was astounded at how good the wine tasted. It was a red table wine that cost less than 2,000 yen. I was amazed to discover that there was wine this good in Nagano Prefecture. My curiosity was piqued. I decided that if I ever opened my own place, I would put Nagano Wine on the menu.”
Narusawa Atsuto (left) with his brother-in-law chef Koide Katsunori (right) at the restaurant Vino della Gatta Sakaki, which is attached to his winery. Here you can enjoy wine paired with delicious cuisine featuring an abundance of local Nagano ingredients.
Japan has experienced several wine booms in the past. During the economic bubble of the late 1980s through circa 1992, there was a craze for fine wines, and French and Italian wines were all the rage. It wasn’t so long ago that Beaujolais Nouveau was hot news every year on the day of its release. Around 2000, Japanese wines came into vogue and, having previously lurked in the shadow of their imported counterparts, claimed the spotlight. This proved a big boost to Nagano wine.
“The number of new wineries producing fine wines started steadily increasing around 2010: Rue de Vin and Hasumi Farm & Winery in Tomi, for instance; Kusunoki Winery in Suzaka; and Votano Wine in Shiojiri. I would often drop by them to stock up, and everyone would be diligently toiling away making wine. That spectacle strengthened my ambition to develop Nagano’s wine culture and Japanese wine culture in general. Occasionally I would help out in the vineyards planting seedlings or harvesting grapes, which I really enjoyed. It made me want to grow my own wine grapes and make my own wine.”
Since first getting a job at a food services company, Narusawa Atsuto has fulfilled his dreams one by one: opening his own restaurant, growing his own grapes, establishing the first winery in his hometown. Now he’s ready to make good on his dreams for Nagano wine as a whole.
Atsuto is from the town of Sakaki, Hanishina district, where the Hokushin and Toshin regions of Nagano Prefecture meet. Climate-wise, this area gets less rain than almost anywhere else in Japan and receives many days of sunshine, with large swings between daytime and nighttime temperatures. For these reasons, it had since olden times been a major producer of apples, peaches, kyoho grapes, and other fruit. But there were still no farmers growing grapes for wine.
“I had a relative who was a farmer and grew table grapes. He was fond of wine himself, and when I broached the subject, he was game. So I borrowed a small plot of land from him. That was in 2011. A new mayor of Sakaki was elected the same year. The new mayor had previously headed the California office of a Japanese IT firm. And California is synonymous with wine, right? One of his campaign promises, believe it or not, had been to establish a winery in Sakaki.”
The town of Sakaki set up its own municipally run vineyard at the same time as Atsuto acquired his plot. To decide what variety of grapes to plant there, a major beverage company was engaged to conduct a soil survey. This survey found that the area had a type of soil not generally found in other municipalities. It was gravelly and offered excellent drainage.
“Gravelly soil: that’s the same as the soil on the left bank in Bordeaux, France. It’s excellent soil. Indeed, the company even asked to acquire a plot itself. What was planted in Bordeaux was Cabernet Sauvignon, which also happened to be one of my favorite grape varieties. So that’s what I decided to try my luck with.”
Atsuto carefully tending to grapes one bunch at a time. He grows varieties suited to the gravelly, permeable soil, the main black grapes being Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
Generally speaking, several climatic conditions are favorable to growing wine grapes. These include little rainfall, long hours of sunshine, and significant temperature swings within a 24-hour period. Dry, unfertile land is better than high productive land abounding in nutrients and moisture. Topography and soil are also relevant factors. Is the vineyard located on a sunny hillside? Does the soil offer good drainage? These and other environmental features of the place where a wine is produced are, in the wine community, referred to collectively as the “terroir.” The terroir greatly affects a wine’s character and taste.
Convinced of Sakaki’s considerable potential, Atsuto was determined to make a wine that brought out the place’s terroir. He entered the Chikumagawa Wine Academy in Tomi to study winemaking. The Academy was founded in 2015 to train the next generation of winery entrepreneurs, and Atsuto was a member of the first class to enroll. The principal was essayist and painter Tamamura Toyoo, who in 2003 established Villa d’Est Gardenfarm and Winery in Tomi and produced wine made with European grapes. He has had a considerable influence on Japanese winemaking. Meeting Tamamura Toyoo was to strengthen Atsuto’s connection to Nagano wine.
Establishing a winery is not necessarily a must for someone intending to make their own wine. Nagano had many small-scale producers without their own winery. They would take their grapes to an existing winery and outsource the job of making and selling their wine to it. To set up a winery, you needed a license under the Liquor Tax Act, but obtaining that license was no easy task: you had to produce a minimum of 6,000 liters (8,000 bottles of wine) a year. There was, however, a program relaxing that requirement. If a municipality was certified as a “special wine zone,” minimum production was lowered to 2,000 liters (3,000 bottles) a year.
“Eight [now ten] municipalities including Sakaki and Tomi received certification as one vast zone called the ‘Chikumagawa Wine Valley (East) Special Wine Zone.’ That was a major turning point. The vineyard that we owned was ready to start harvesting around 2015. But no matter how we tallied up the figures, there was no way we were going to reach 2,000 liters. The municipally run vineyard was also now producing a steady crop. The job of managing it was outsourced to someone recruited from the public, and the guy chosen happened to be a friend of mine. I’d already talked to him about setting up a business together one day and starting our own winery. Our vineyard and the municipal vineyard combined would reach the magic number of 2,000 liters a year. The term of the municipal vineyard was set to end in 2017, so I asked the town to let us take it over. We put together a business plan covering all the bases: financing, buyers, facilities and equipment, not to mention winemaking staff.”
The linchpin of any winery is its winemaker. Atsuto had just started looking for the right person for the job when he met a woman named Kaori Howard through an acquaintance. She had spent twelve years making wine at a winery in America’s Napa Valley.
“It was a tremendous stroke of good fortune. At exactly that time, by sheer coincidence, she was thinking of returning to Japan with her husband to bring up their kids in rural Japan. I asked her to join our team.”
Having started out by opening Osteria Gatto, Atsuto now operated three establishments. His winery was slated to have its own restaurant, and he had found a sales outlet for his wine. At the end of 2017, the local newspaper, the Shinano Mainichi Shimbun, was emblazoned with the headline “Sakaki’s First Ever Winery Opens” and a photo of Narusawa Atsuto. In 2018, his winery Sakaki Wine and its restaurant Vino della Gatta SAKAKI opened for business.
Inside Atsuto’s winery, which dedicates itself to bringing out the unique potential of Sakaki’s wine grapes.
A wine label is in French called the étiquette, which literally means a tag indicating what’s inside the package. When you look at the label on a bottle of wine, it tells you the name of the winery and the producer, the vintage, classification, and ABV. But the labels of Atsuto’s wines don’t give those details.
“We put all the information about the wine on the back of the bottle. That way, people will take it off the shelf to look at the back when shopping for wine. If, conversely, all the information were on the front, I didn’t think they’d bother to take it off the shelf.”
Instead of text, the label on the front of the bottle displays a design either by contemporary artist Komatsu Miwa, a native of Sakaki known for her depictions of mythical creatures, or Nagano painter OZ-Yamaguchi Keisuke. Both artists are highly regarded internationally. The label by Komatsu Miwa shows a pair of cats side by side. But why cats?
“Because the chef Katsunori and I have both been cat lovers since we were little. We decided to name all our restaurants and wines after cats. The name of our first restaurant, Osteria Gatto [since renamed Neko no Wine], means ‘tomcat.’ Our second restaurant La Gatta, a French place, means ‘female cat.’ Our third place, a bakery, is called Konamonya Koneko [‘Kitten Bakery’]. Vino della Gatta, the restaurant attached to the winery, means ‘cat’s wine.’ All our wines are named after cats as well. There’s the Sauvignon Blanc ‘Neko Jarashi’ [literally ‘cat’s tease,’ the Japanese word for foxtail], the Merlot ‘Nekonadegoe’ [literally ‘cat-soothing voice’], and the Cabernet Sauvignon ‘Neko Punch’ [‘cat punch’].”
The artwork on the labels is stunning, while the cute names are endearing.
The label of the bottle in the middle depicting a pair of cats is by Komatsu Miwa. The labels on the two bottles at either end are by OZ-Yamaguchi Keisuke. They portray the winery and the Narusawa family amidst scenes of Sakaki.
This stunning artwork by Komatsu Miwa is the first thing that catches your eye when you step into the Vino della Gatta SAKAKI restaurant.
In 2013, Nagano Prefecture formulated the Shinshu Wine Valley Initiative. The first chair of the council charged with implementing the initiative was none other than Tamamura Toyoo. Atsuto too has played a role in the council since its formation.
“The Shinshu Wine Valley Initiative consists of three main pillars: developing producing areas, enhancing value, and promotion. I took charge of promotional activities, setting up a body called the Nagano Wine Promotion Team . We planned wine events and organized tastings and seminars, among other things.”
Nagano Wine Festival in Tokyo, for example, took place annually between 2014 and 2020. (It was subsequently suspended or held elsewhere.) Every year, the venue was packed with people from dozens of wineries and vineyards, plus visitors who had come to sample the wines. The tickets always sold out.
Atsuto had spent years spreading the word about what made Nagano wine special, a true believer in its future. He had constantly worked not just to grow his own business but also to develop the entire Nagano wine industry, as everyone recognized. In 2023, he became chair of Shinshu Wine Valley Initiative 2.0, assuming the mantle from Tamamura Toyoo.
Recently, Atsuto tried something new and interesting with Ferment Valley NAGANO in the form of an event for students at the University of Nagano. This combined a seminar on Nagano foods with a dinner where cuisine prepared using Nagano ingredients was served with Nagano wine and sake.
“The up-and-coming young generation have a powerful voice. I want to convince them that Nagano is a wonderful place with a lot of great foods. Hopefully some of them will one day carry on Nagano’s culinary culture.”
From left:Hors d’oeuvre made using Nagano ingredients and seasonings, served with Masumi Sparkling(Masumi Jozo in Suwa)
Risotto with nozawana pickles and 4 Atelier de Fromage cheeses, served with Cat’s-Eye(Sakaki Wine in Sakaki)
Ako oyster spaghettini, served with Miwatari junmai unfiltered, unpasteurized, undiluted new sake (Toshimaya in Komagane)
Shinshu pork shoulder stewed in red wine and miso with red cabbage pickled in vinegar, served with Seil Merlot + Cabernet Blanc (Gakufarm & Winery in Matsumoto)
“What I want to work on next is fostering cooperation between the wine tourism sector and other industries. I think it’s still going to be difficult to attract visitors to Shinshu for the wine alone. Nagano has sake. It has a culture of healthy fermented foods like miso and soy sauce. It abounds with nature and has a great climate. And if amid all that, tourists, especially overseas tourists, also try the wine, they’ll be delightfully surprised at how good it is. Our winery has finally crossed the 10,000-bottle mark, but 10,000 bottles is actually small potatoes. There are still many new wineries with production in the 3,000-bottle range. The challenge for them isn’t so much exporting their wine as how to get people to drink it when they’re visiting the area.
“Nagano is a newcomer to winemaking. It doesn’t have its own traditional varieties of grapes, unlike, say, Koshu in Yamanashi Prefecture. Here, if you’re fond of a particular variety of grapes, you can choose a location suited to growing them, and if you have your heart set on a particular location, you can choose whatever grapes are best suited to it. There are all kinds of people making their own distinctive wines according to their own lights. Many different varieties of grapes are grown here. This is a fascinating place to be making wine. It has a lot of sake breweries as well. Even if tourists come here primarily for the sake, I think they can be persuaded to check out the wine too.
“Right now, the first place that comes up when you talk about Japanese wine is Yamanashi. I’m confident that Nagano can do what Yamanashi has done. Nagano is set to become the number one prefecture in Japan for number of wineries five years down the road. A decade from now, we want to turn it into such a major producer that when ten people are asked what they most associate with Nagano, several will answer, ‘Wine.’”
In 2009, Narusawa Atsuto opened the Italian restaurant Osteria Gatto in the city of Nagano with his brother-in-law Koide Katsunori. In 2011, he planted his own vineyard in the town of Sakaki. In 2013, he opened another restaurant, La Gatta, and the bakery Konamonya Koneko. He formed the Nagano Wine Promotion Team Steering Committee the same year and served as its first head. He was a member of the first class to enroll in the Chikumagawa Wine Academy in 2015. He launched Sakaki Wine Co., Ltd. in Sakaki in 2017. The next year he opened a restaurant, Vino della Gatta SAKAKI, as part of the winery. In 2023, he became chair of the Shinshu Wine Valley Initiative 2.0 Promotion Council .
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