Oct. 10
In the morning, I took the Shinksen train to Yamagata.
At noon, I arrived at Kaminoyama Onsen.
I organized a wine workshop for York Benimaru managers.
This seminar, which will be held for the fifth time, is a winery training.
We gathered at Takeda Winery in Kaminoyama.
First, we visited the estate vineyards that spread around the winery.
Chardonnay field of 30-year-old trees.
A field of Muscat Bailey A, a very old 70-year-old trees.
Merlot fields leading up the slopes.
Most of today’s participants visited to winery at the first time, and everyone was very interested.
Did you understand how amazing this vineyard was?
When I returned to the winery, we saw working on the triage of Muscat Bailey A, which had just arrived from Tendo.
Noriko, the company’s president, took the lead in earnestly sorting the bunches of grapes.
The great thing about Takeda Winery is that all the grapes for about 200,000 bottles of wine, including bottom-range wines, are triaged by hand in this way.
Next, we visited the underground cellar.
It is a cellar that can be said to be a symbol of Takeda Winery, which was completed in the mid-1970s.
Fifty years ago, how visionary it would have been to build a cellar of this size.
In oak barrels, red wine is aging.
We saw the bottling line through the glass.
Then we tried a wine tasting.
In addition to the classic Takeda Wine Blanc and Rouge, the winery offered precious, precious and famous wines Chateau Takeda Chardonnay 2019 and Domaine Takeda Furuki Muscat Bailey A 2020.
I was also excited.
We found beautiful cool acid, elegant fruits taste, and pure mouthfeel of Takeda Winery.
In addition, I was impressed by the dignity, depth of taste, and noble appearance of the famous wine.
Noriko, who is super busy with the preparation work, came to greet us.
In response to the question, “What is the most important thing for Noriko in winemaking?”
The answer was, “Is it to accept everything that is in this place and the vineyard and make wine with humility?”
Noriko-san, who has a long experience in winemaking in France, has persuasive words for continuing to produce wonderful wines unique to Yamagata and unique to Takeda Winery under the harsh conditions of Japan viticulture.
The managers of York Benimaru were also impressed, which was good.
After all, visiting a winery is good.
In our daily work, we tend to think that wine is just a commodity. But we realized that the truth is that it is the taste of the land that is born from the hard work of facing nature.
It was a short visit, but it was a very valuable experience.
Thank you to everyone at Takeda Winery.
Thank you to everyone at York Benimaru.
Today is a day trip.
On the bullet train on the way home, I returned to Tokyo while tasting a little Takeda Wine Blanc that I had transferred to a plastic bottle at the winery.
Very Good Job!
