How an Agency Specializing in Nagano Wine Tours Is Sharing the Delights of Nagano Wine and Food

One thing that should be on any wine lover’s bucket list is going on a wine tour — a tour of a winemaking region. On such a tour, you get a rare look behind the scenes at where wine is actually made: the winery, the cellar, the vineyard. You get to meet winemakers and winegrowers, touch and feel their lovingly tended grapes, taste their wines, and sample the local cuisine. A wine tour thus lets you experience the local terroir and culture, not to mention try the wine itself. Nagano Wine Travel is a travel agency well known to the cognoscenti for organizing and running wine tours exclusively of Nagano Prefecture. We talked to the agency’s principal, self-confessed oenophile Maezawa Tomoe.

Fall is the season for gleefully gathering grapes under blue skies on a hands-on harvest tour.

The grape growers at the wineries grow restless as autumn approaches. It is the culmination of their year, when the grapes are harvested. Clouds scud across clear blue skies while the crop ripens in the soil. Every day, growers check the state of their grapes, eyes glued to the weather forecast to determine the best day to gather them in. Maezawa Tomoe, principal of Nagano Wine Travel in the city of Tomi, has an equally hectic schedule at this time of year.

“Hands-on grape harvest tours are popular during this season of the year. Harvest time in Nagano falls roughly between the end of August and early November, peaking in September and October. The harvest moves gradually from vineyards at lower elevations to those higher up. Every year we put together an itinerary timed to match the harvest. Most of our tours are for small groups — small enough to get around in a minivan taxi.

“Many of the participants have never picked grapes before. When they see the vines laden with clusters of ripe grapes under blue skies, they all let out cries of delight. They’re personally instructed by the grower on which grapes to pick, how to hold the shears, and where to cut. They’re obviously having fun as they work away. The work in the vineyards is followed by a winery tour and wine tasting. By that time everybody is getting on famously. I find it very gratifying when someone says, ‘There’s nothing like a glass of wine after working in the vineyards.’ A lunch paired with the wine served in a place overlooking the vineyards is sometimes part of the program. It’s like going on a picnic.

“Many places in Nagano have stunning vineyard scenery in the fall. Depending on when you visit, you may also get to see the autumn colors. There are also lots of delicious things to eat. So when you come for the harvest, you might want to stay the night so you can enjoy the flavors of autumn and check out an onsen.”

Left: Tour members in the vineyards removing leaves. In the autumn you can try your hand at picking. Right: A tour of the winery by the winemaker himself. Being a locally based operator, Nagano Wine Travel can arrange tours of wineries that are usually off limits to visitors.

Nagano Travel’s custom tours let you do what you want!

Besides pre-packaged tours, Nagano Travel also offers custom tours designed from scratch to meet to your requirements. You’re completely free to decide how many people will go, where to visit, and for how many days.

“More and more people are signing up for custom tours nowadays. Their primary objective is to drink good wine, but I also get lots of requests to see Nagano’s beautiful scenery or listen to winemakers talk about their craft. Also, restaurant and liquor-store professionals searching for suppliers sometimes approach me for advice about wineries and wine districts. Nagano wine is in the spotlight these days, and I get a lot of customers from outside the prefecture.

“Visitors to Nagano all remark on how close the mountains are. Everywhere you look, there are wine grapes growing on the mountainsides. People often ask me, ‘What are the hallmarks of Nagano’s wines and vineyards?’ I think the most distinctive feature is the altitude difference. The prefecture’s vineyards range from 350 to 900 meters above sea level. Altitudes vary even within the same wine district. Altitude affects a wine’s acidity. Take white wine, for example. Wines from higher altitudes possess a crisp acidity like lemon or grapefruit. Conversely, wines from lower altitudes have a mellow flavor like apples or pears. It might be interesting to use that as a benchmark — you know, this winery is so many meters above sea level, so the wine must taste like this.”

Tomoe, a qualified sommelier, doesn’t just act as a guide escorting each tour and facilitating communication between the tour participants and winemakers. She also shares her extensive knowledge of wine as a wine professional. That includes information on Nagano’s unique wine districts and the hallmarks of its wines, types of grapes, pairings of wine with food, and so on and so forth. Moreover, she’s an endless source of gastronomic tidbits on great-tasting local restaurants or the perfect gift for the folks back home. She’s more like a personal assistant than a guide.

“Being a wine lover and a foodie myself, I’m always on the lookout for new information.”

Wine lover Maezawa Tomoe. She set up her own company specializing in wine tours of Nagano after visiting over a hundred wineries and vineyards all over Japan.

I was really into visiting wineries, and I drew on that experience to set up my own wine tour company.

Tomoe first fell in love with wine when she was at university, where she majored in French, and visited France on a short homestay.

“There was always a bottle of wine on the dining table at the home where I stayed. Though I’d never drunk wine before, I thought it was a wonderful cultural tradition.”
Thus began Tomoe’s love affair with wine. After graduating from university, she found a job with an airline. She got to try wines as well as many other liquors at the places she visited as a flight attendant.

“Many of the flight attendants looked forward to enjoying the food and drink at the places they stayed. I too had plenty of opportunities to go to various restaurants and drink their wine. Eventually I decided to get my certification as a sommelier. I worked on domestic as well as international flights, and I came to realize that each region of Japan had its own distinctive cuisine. It was a stimulating experience.”

Tomoe became ever more enamored of wine. On obtaining her certification as a sommelier, she left the airline. After a stint with a media company, she worked for a trading firm that imported and sold wine.

“There I gained experience selling wine, but I was still uncertain about what I wanted to do with my life. I’d long been into visiting wineries all over Japan when I got the time. I found it fascinating to talk with the winemaker and look around the vineyards and the place where the wine was made and work in the vineyards myself. It was always an exciting, enlightening experience. Then in 2016, I volunteered to help out at a wine event being held in the city of Nagano. That’s where I met my husband, who was likewise taking part in the event. He grew grapes in Nagano Prefecture. Aspiring winemakers were flocking to Nagano Prefecture at the time. The city of Tomi was a particular hotspot. That’s where Tamamura Toyoo, a well-known essayist, had planted vines on two hectares of land, set up a winery, and in 2015 opened the Chikumagawa Wine Academy. My husband was a member of the academy’s first graduating class.”

After meeting her husband, Tomoe moved to Tomi. There she established her present company in 2020, applying the knowledge she’d gained touring wineries and her previous career experience.

Right: Arc-En-Vigne Chardonnay. Left: Arc-En-Vigne Merlot. The Arc-En-Vigne winery in Tomi, which kindly gave permission to take the photos featured here, hosts the Chikumagawa Wine Academy. Tomoe’s husband is a member of the Academy’s first graduating class. “These wines have a balanced flavor that makes them easy to incorporate into everyday meals,” Tomoe notes. “They fully bring out the character of the grapes and amply reflect Nagano’s terroir.”

Hands-on tours teach the importance of experiencing products where they’re made.

“I’m committed to delivering an on-the-ground learning experience. I want people to talk directly to producers on the ground, to experience grapes growing up-close. That’s something you can’t do by reading a book or surfing the Internet. I think it’s valuable to combine different types of experiences. For example, recently I tried something new. I organized an overnight tour called the Hands-on Fermentation Tour of Nagano, which was designed to give people a sense of what microorganisms can do. We toured the cities of Saku, Tomi, and Ueda, visiting a sake brewery, a cheese factory, a miso factory, a bakery, a beer brewery, and a winery. All are artisanal producers of fermented products that are very popular locally. Of course, participants got to listen firsthand to the producers and actually enjoy their products through tastings and at lunch.

“The visit to the bakery was particularly interesting. At this bakery they make their own yeast starter, and they prepared us two batches of bread to taste and compare: one using their own starter, the other using commercially available yeast. Well, the two tasted and smelt completely different, even though the only difference was the starter. The tour participants were amazed. I too felt that the bread made with the house-made starter had a richer flavor.

“When we visited the miso factory, they performed a little experiment for us. They prepared us two types of miso: the handmade miso they sell and some store-bought miso. They put each in a bowl, then poured on potato starch slurry and hot water to dissolve the miso. The handmade miso dissolved completely, while the store-bought stuff remained separated. With handmade miso, the starch is broken down by the enzymes; but ethanol is added to commercially sold miso because it has to be shipped to market, so the enzymes are inactive. Similarly, sake that’s to be shipped to market is pasteurized to stop it fermenting. Some unpasteurized ‘raw sakes’ are only available where they’re brewed. Products containing living enzymes have, I feel, a more complex flavor, whether handmade miso or raw sake. It’s not a question of which is better or worse, but there are things you can only eat where they’re made. This tour was a reminder of the importance of experiencing, of tasting products where they’re made.”

Pairing Nagano wine with local foods

Tomoe shares information about wine and food on social media, where she has a large following. She often posts about pairings of wine with food. Since she knows a lot about all the delicious things Nagano Prefecture has to offer, we asked her which alcoholic beverages go well with Nagano’s best-loved foods.

“The first thing people think of when they think of Nagano is pickled nozawana, a type of mustard green, so let’s start with that. What you should drink with pickled nozawana is cider. Nagano is also a producer of apples, so it makes a lot of cider. The number of new cideries here has been increasing. Cider comes in a wide variety of flavors, from dry to sweet. I’d recommend a semisweet cider with pickled nozawana. Next, oyaki — savory dumplings with various fillings. A soft red wine goes nicely with miso-flavored oyaki. If the wine is too astringent, it will overwhelm the taste of the oyaki. A light wine like a Pinot Noir is what you want. Nozawana and oyaki are generally regarded as old-fashioned regional specialties, but enjoying them with a glass of wine creates a whole new taste experience.

Tomoe regularly shares information about pairing Nagano wine with food on social media. Her extensive following includes not only wine lovers and travel buffs but also foodies.

“Nagano produces an abundance of edible wild plants in spring. I just love tempura made with wild plants like taranome (fatsia sprouts) and kogomi (fiddlehead fern). I eat it with a squeeze of lemon and some salt and pair it with white wine. A Chardonnay made at one of Nagano’s high-altitude wineries is a great match. Another Nagano food I’d strongly recommend is game meat. With game meat, of course, you want a red wine. A tannic Cabernet Sauvignon is perfect. Fall and winter are game season. If you visit Nagano during those months, be sure to try game meat with red wine.”

Tomoe happily answers whatever questions you throw at her, and not just about wine. If you asked her to arrange a tour where you could enjoy game meat with red meat, she would doubtless oblige. So why not explore Nagano’s wines and culinary delights on a custom tour with Nagano Wine Travel?