The past two months have flown by as the Foster family converged on New York City to celebrate the birth of Mariko’s first child, a little girl named Noa. We all had a great time including a picnic in Central Park and attending a piano concert at Carnegie Hall. Jim had ambitious plans to visit some wineries in the New York area and in Washington, D.C. — but in the end there was only time to do a tasting at a vineyard formerly run by a high school classmate and where now one of his cousins, Marianne, helps manage the tastings.
The Sugarloaf Mountain winery is just outside of Washington D.C, in Montgomery County, Maryland. Jim sampled the seven wines on the menu at the winery and was entranced by the Petite Manseng, a lesser known grape originally from France with a delightful sweetness and neatly balancing acidity. Sugarloaf Mountain planted the vines in 2006, believing that this varietal could stand up to the often hot and humid weather characteristic of summer time in Maryland. They were right!
And we will go further to say that Nagano Prefecture, which has a climate and terrain quite akin to that of Northern Maryland, is a place where Petite Manseng may also find a home. In fact, already in Japan the Coco Farms Winery located in Tochigi Prefecture (but with vineyards also in Nagano) currently produces a Petite Manseng that we hope to report on at a later date. We checked and it is currently out of stock at the winery.
With this as background, we decided this month to look at some affordable and interesting wines that might not make it to your dinner table — but are certainly ready to join you on the porch or come along on an afternoon picnic.
Gaku Winery Kar Pinot Gris 2021
Gaku Winery Kar Pinot Gris 2021
The Pinot Gris grapes used in this wine were first planted in 2017 — and this is only the third round of wine production for this new winery, which is run by a young graduate of Shiojiri wine academy. We wrote about the winery in our July 2021 review, tasting an experimental “pink” version of the Pinot Gris, i.e. one where the winemaker adds colors and flavors to the wine by adding grape skins to the mix for fermentation. The wine was a bit closed at the start but opened up nicely. In 2021, the winery used only the grapes (no skins) and the resulting wine had a remarkable luminescent golden hue and was suffused with the scent of pineapple and tropical fruits. No need to wait to drink this wine, which registered a 22 Brix at harvest and a respectable 12.5 percent alcohol content — slightly down from the 13 percent rose produced the previous year. In our view, wines made from the Pinot Gris grapes may now join the ranks of those crafted from Semillon and Petite Manseng as being among the white wines that are most congruent with Japanese cuisine — sharing with Japanese sake a delightful sweetness that local winemakers have only rarely been able to coax out of their Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs. And, as the years passed, succeeding generations of these wines are only going to get better. This is one to watch out for in the future — but also try it now if you can find it.
Price 3300 yen; sold out online — but check out Nagano retailers, such as Shinshu Kuraudo located at Nagano station
Izutsu Winery Shinshu Merlot 2022
Izutsu Winery Shinshu Merlot 2022
This is a wine for your everyday summer table. We have been drinking Izutsu wine and stopping by the winery in Shiojiri City for as long as we have been writing this blog. Izutsu is one of the largest independent (i.e. not operated by a conglomerate like Suntory or Kikkoman) winemakers in Japan and it has always positioned itself as making wine for the average consumer, who buys wine at supermarkets not speciality shops. Yes, Izutsu does make some high end wines — but production is small and the price/performance is not always there. But recently something has changed — as we have documented over the past two years — and while staying in its price lane, Izutsu wines have become very drinkable. This wine is a good example: decent nose, good color, no off flavors, 13 percent alcohol, and a subtle hint of tannins. You are not going to “lay up” this wine: you are going to drink it. And whether it is an evening meal on the porch during the summer or a snowstorm in January, this wine will not let you down. What may have changed is that Izutsu has learned how to better manage its grapes — harvesting at the right time and figuring out how to maintain consistent quality — so that you know what you are getting for your money. You can pay much more for better wines in Nagano — but the price is just right from what Izutsu delivers to your table.
Price: 1700 yen; available online from the winery
Kido Winery Autumn Colors Rouge 2022
Kido Winery Autumn Colors Rouge 2022
It is that time of year again! That is, it is time for the Kido Winery to hold its annual lottery (which is the only way it sells wine to the general public) to determine who gets to buy up to six bottles of its Autumn Colors (in red and white) branded wine. The rules as outlined on the website are “serious” in an amusing way — and we have found that the easiest way to get these wines is to buy them through friends at the Yorozuya wine shop in our town of Shinanomachi. Purchases are limited to one bottle per person. We have reviewed the Autumn Colors Rouge annually since 2019 and initially looked favorably on winemaker, Akihito Kido’s efforts to find a way to create a “Japanese Bordeaux” blend through bringing together Merlot and Muscat Bailey A (MBA) grapes. The result has been generally pleasing, but alas not a real game changer. Why? Because, while the MBA helps to “weed out” the vegetative tastes associated with many Japanese Merlots (due to under-ripeness), it has also tended to result in an overly jammy wine that has reinforced the “heavy” side of the Merlot grape.
So after several years of patience and after tasting the 2022 version of the Autumn Rouge, we cannot recommend it. Kido Winery does make other more expensive 100 percent Merlot wines — but they are not available online or through normal market channels. This winey and winemaker has enormous promise as evidenced by the fact that the British wine critic, Jaime Goode, picked Kido Winery as the first winey that he visited in kicking off his multi-year review of Nagano wineries and wines. But if Nagano wine is going to reach its potential and influence the arc of winemaking in Japan, the industry as a whole needs to move to operating at scale and marketing their products through a broader range of retail channels.
Price 2900 yen; sold out at winery. May be available through some retail channels, e.g. Ginza Nagano..
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