I attended a wine tour, which was held by "Brutus wine club" to produce a private
wine with Mercian winery for this vintage 2004.
The purpose of the tour today was the investigation to the vineyards.
It took 3 hours around from Tokyo to the vineyards, Nagano Kikyogahara, on the
highway by bus.
Unfortunately, it was rain today. Unfortunately, we had a big wine party in
the bus even though early morning.。
We had a lot of Champagne, white wine and red wine.
On the way, we picked up Mr.Fujino, a general wine product manager of Mercian.
Then we heard a lecture by Mr.Fujino about wine making earnestly.
We often stopped at service area to manage a lot of liquids.
Then we arrived the vineyards.
We surprised that it was not rain here around.
I was able to confirm that the place has one of the smallest rain in Japan.
Then we had a lecture of vineyards by Mr.Shiohara, vineyards manager.
He said "The vintage 2004 is one of the best vintages due to a very hot summer."
We checked the condition of grape very carefully in the vineyards.
I surprised that there were many grapes dropped on the ground.
Vineyards staff cut a lot of grapes yesterday to let left grapes concentrate it's taste.
After the investigation, we had a BBQ lunch at a cool local restaurant.
The restaurant was so cool. We enjoyed a lot of local wines and a BBQ very much.
Oh ! what ? Wasn't it a South African wine ?
After lunch, we visited two neighbor wineries, Goichi winery and Izutsu winery.
Here were well known as high quality Merlot.
I was really impressed about it and I confirmed again that it was very difficult
to make a good wine.
