Our group was comprised of Coco Farm staff―all of the vineyard and winery team, plus a few members of the guest reception staff―along with some friends: grape growers, wine writers, importers of French wines and barrels. The size of the group was “organic”, growing or shrinking according to the day, a band of at least 10 and at times as many as 17 people that crawled across the French landscape looking for answers and something good to drink.

The purpose of the tour was to learn.

The questions to which we sought answers were at times specific. In Champagne we wanted to learn how to improve methode champenoise production in micro-quantities. This has a direct relation to our production of Novo sparkling wine. When we first began producing Novo, there were very few small-volume Champagne producers of note. While the market is still dominated by the large grande marque houses, the last 15 years or so has seen a dramatic rise in the number of quality-oriented grower-producers (recoltant-manipulant) turning out bottlings of only several thousands of bottles. We visited these types of producers with specific questions about how to maintain quality and consistency while producing very small amounts of wine.

In the Loire, we had similarly specific questions regarding “natural” farming, that is, farming without the use of pesticide sprays. Most of the producers we planned to visit in the Loire had been chosen because they were growing grapes organically, with very limited spray use (if any at all).

In other instances the questions we brought to France were very general… how can one maximize the quality from one’s vineyard land? What does one look for in a ripe grape? What were peoples’ motivations for making the kinds of wines they did?

Along the way we met up with an array of wonders: studious lecturers, gentle madmen, prophets, stoics, mountain men and suave cosmopolitans, quiet, intense types and people boiling over with passion, a mountain of foie gras, a volatile French-Armenian ex-heavyweight bus driver, and great, great wines flowing like rivers.

The days were long and hard, usually out of bed by 6:30 AM, and not checking into the next hotel until late in the evening. Even before we left, many were wondering if there would be any time for sight-seeing given the hard, tight schedule. I assured them that there would be no time at all, and they complained. We reached a compromise along the way, something we called “10 second tourism” (「１０秒観光」), where we’d ask the bus driver to slow down when we approached a castle or cathedral or picturesque town square. People snapped a quick picture or two from the bus window and “Ooohed” and “Aaaahed” a bit before the bus driver kicked it into gear and rushed off to our next appointment.

The experience was invaluable. We learned a lot, and like any matter worth serious consideration, came home with more questions than answers.

For me, to see our group of Japanese wine people sitting at the same table as their French counterparts, pouring and critiquing each other’s wines, sharing food, smiles, and bad jokes about Americans was worth it all.

We’d like to thank all who made this possible, including Francois Dumas, Iida Kanako, Thierry Nerisson, and especially the vignerons we met along the way. Many thanks for taking us into your vineyards and your homes to share your thoughts, your dreams, your passions, and your wonderful wines.

What follows are accounts of each day’s discoveries, written by our crew. I hope you enjoy…

My last entry, I am sorry to say, did little justice to the situation in New Orleans. The hurricane did shift east of the city, sparing it a direct hit.

But the passing of such a huge weather system has caused massive flooding in that city. The nightly cable news is filled with horrible scenes of a city spiraling out of control. Government, that supposedly great pillar of advanced civilizations, is paralyzed. Squabbles about “jurisdiction” or “risk management” fill the air, when it should all be about people helping people.

Scenes of looting and rioting trade places with pictures of old people and young children stranded, alone, and without any food or water.

A stunning reminder of Nature’s raw power, and Man’s smallness in the face of such power.

My heart goes out to all affected by this disaster.

3 September, 2005
Back to wine.

We’ve spent the last few days doing a special, limited-bottling disgorgement of some back vintages of our sparkling wine, Novo.

Vintages involved were: 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, and 2001.

All have these have until now been aging ‘en tirage’. That is, they’ve been aging in our warehouse in bottle, undisgorged, with the secondary fermentation’s yeast sediment still inside the bottle. We spent the last month or so “riddling” them, turning them gently twice a day to get all the sediment into the neck of the bottle where it can be removed.

For some of these wines, the time that yeast and wine spent together in bottle is extremely long. For the 1992 vintage (our first Novo), for instance, the wine and yeast aged together for 12 years before yesterday’s disgorging.

A longer time spent with yeast sediment yields a wine with finer, gentler bubbles and more complex, earthy aromas.

All bottles have held up remarkably well, with each showing a definite character unique to the vintage. The ’92 and ’93 were broad and earthy, showing very much the influence of over a decade of aging with yeast lees in the bottle. The ’95 was a “transitional wine” marking the change from a fuller, heavier sparkler to a lighter, tighter one. From ’96 on, the wines show more restraint and minerality.

It was fun to open these wines and think back on the years that have passed. We even disgorged a small amount of rose made from Muscat Bailey A. I remember distinctly putting this blend together and bottling the small amount (about 100 bottles) by hand with my friend and co-worker Machiko. For an instant, tasting the rose, I was brought back to a summer day a decade-plus gone by. Such is the power of wine.

4 September, 2005

For the last two days we’ve been disgorging older vintages of our Novo wine. Bottling the Novo can be very nerve-racking. The bottles of wine, with their high amount of “sparkle”, contain much carbon dioxide dissolved into the liquid. The pressure inside a sealed bottle is therefore very high, about 5.5 atmospheres of pressure. Sometimes bottles explode as corks are being inserted or the bottles are being shifted back and forth during the bottling process. To relieve the tension of the bottling run, I try to keep the staff loose, and keep them in good spirits.

This time around, as we went through the small amount of bottles from each year, I asked the staff the same question: “Who was Japan’s Prime Minister during that year”?

None of the staff could answer the question at all, except for the most recent vintage opened, 2001. For those interested, the answers are:

1992…Miyazawa Kiichi

1993…Miyazawa Kiichi, then Hosokawa Morihiro

1994…Hosokawa Morihiro, then Hata Tsutomu, then Murayama Tomiichi

1995…Murayama Tomiichi

1996…Murayama Tomiichi, then Hashimoto Ryutaro

1998…Hashimoto Ryutaro, then Obuchi Keizo

2001…Mori Yoshiro, then Koizumi Junichiro

If you can remember this list, then you will have a more advanced knowledge of recent Japanese history than my staff does.

4 September, 2005

The Novo wines mentioned above will most likely be sold in special 6-bottle sets, vertical selections of the wine from six separate vintages.

Please keep an eye on our website if you’re interested in purchasing a set. Be prepared for a pretty hefty price tag, though: we only had enough inventory on hand to produce about 40 of these rare sets.

I went off to Yamanashi today to visit with one of our contract grape growers, a man named Akiyama. I’ve known Mr. Akiyama for about 15 years now, and always enjoy visiting with him, walking through his vineyards together, talking about his vines, seeing the love he pours into growing grapes.

We took the opportunity today to walk through his vineyards testing the grape ripeness on a per-vine basis. When we found particularly ripe grapes from a single vine we tagged the vine with yellow tape and wrote a code number on the tape. We hope to re-visit these specific vines over the course of the next few years to see if they are consistently producing riper, sweeter, more intensely flavored grapes than other vines in the same vineyards. If we find vines that always do better than others then we can single out this vines as clonal material, and propagate cuttings from these specially selected vines to make more vines whenever we hope to re-plant old vineyards or plant out new vineyards.

We spent the morning visiting the several different vineyard parcels held by Mr. Akiyama. The last parcel we visited was one he calls “Yamaji”, or “Mountain Path”. It is in fact a part of the locally famous “Torii Bira” vineyard (if you want a translation for that name, ask someone else). Torii Bira is a steep slope at the foot of a mountain range just north of the town of Katsunuma. The soils are clay with friable rock mixed in, and the slope faces directly south, catching the full light of the summer sun. It is the closest thing that Katsunuma has to a ‘Grand Cru’ vineyard, a ‘Greath Growth’ plot of land where many growers produce grapes and wines of depth and distinction. Mr. Akiyama’s piece of land is one that he has held for a long time, though until recently it was planted to table grapes. A few years back he planted Merlot vines there. I am happy to report that the Merlot seems to be doing very well, the grapes showing good color and flavor intensity even at this early date. I have high hopes that this year’s Yamaji Merlot will produce something special, even though the vines are still young. I was very relieved to see how well his grapes are doing. Mr. Akiyama has chosen Merlot, a grape variety that does not respond all that well to the local Yamanashi climate. Much of the Merlot being produced there is thin and watery with little richness or depth on the palate. When Mr. Akiyama first told me of his decision to plant Merlot I was worried, and tried to talk him out of it. But he said that he recognized the challenges, and wanted to go ahead anyway. It seems that he likes Merlot based wines very much, and holds as a dream that he may one day pour a Merlot made from his own grapes at his daughter’s wedding. After hearing the passionate reasons behind his decision, I could do nothing but urge him to go ahead and pursue his dream. Tasting the fruit the other day I felt he has a very good chance to realize his dream some day. As we finished up our business, I asked him if his daughter (still in her early 20s) was seeing anyone special. Thankfully he said that she is not… she’s just received her M.D. degree, and is too busy doing an internship to date seriously.

This, too, was good news. We’ll need a few years for the vines to get older, the roots to go deeper, and the fruit from the passing vintages to gain depth before we are ready to pour a serious Merlot at his daughter’s wedding.

31 August, 2005

Hurricane Katrina apparently missed a direct hit on New Orleans, I am happy to report. Unfortunately, much damage was seen along the entire Gulf Coast, and a heavy loss of life is anticipated. Wine, which seems to dominate my life to an absurd degree, seems unimportant right now.

There’s an old French proverb that I just made up that goes: “Marriage is simple, working with contract grape growers is hard." Or, if there isn’t there ought to be. Today I took a ride to a vineyard in Gunma prefecture from which we buy grapes. The vineyard is owned and farmed by a friend of many years, a man who traded in his suit-and-briefcase businessman lifestyle for a second career as a grape grower. His methods are quite unconventional, eschewing all forms of conventional pesticide sprays in favor of compost teas, herbal preparations, etc. This is not unheard of in other wine-growing countries. But here in Japan, where disease pressures are so high, it is exceedingly rare. Some growers do it, but rely on elaborate structures like greenhouse-style roofing above the entire vineyard to reduce the effect of mold-inducing rains. Our man in Gunma chooses to do without any of these systems. I have argued with him and cajoled for years that he try a more “rational" approach to winegrowing, perhaps by testing his theories and practices on a small part of his vineyard. But he is adamant about this, believing fervently in the efficacy and the benefits of what he does. So he chooses to farm his entire 5 hectare plot in this fashion. We at Coco are happy with his goal of reducing to zero the number of non-natural inputs in his farming. We’ve tried very hard to do the same, and have several experiments working to see if we cannot find cultivar/vineyard site combinations that will allow us to farm without sprays. But we’ve been worried about our friend’s vineyard since he has literally mortgaged his house and leveraged all he owns to finance it. Anyway, I’m happy to say that his vineyard looked very good, with a minimum of damage (mostly from insects), and good, healthy vines. The crop of grapes (predominantly the Vitis aestivalis cultivar Norton) hangs heavy along the fruiting wire, and is just starting to color up. Sitting there on his front porch, looking at the immaculately manicured vineyard sloping down to the valley below, I felt somewhat embarrassed about the grief I had given him in the past about his ideas. But worrying for a friend’s well-being should never really be cause for embarrassment, I’d say.

More than wine, my attention today is drawn half way across the world to the southern United States where the central Gulf Coast states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana are bracing for the impact of Hurricane Katrina. Most of the news from America centers on New Orleans, which sits in the direct path of the hurricane, and is extremely vulnerable due to the fact that much of the city is below sea level. Should the levees protecting the city from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain fail, the entire city maybe flooded to several meters in depth. I adore New Orleans, a hothouse orchid of a city. With its mixed influences of Old South, French, Caribbean and African cultures it is truly a unique town, one with a flavor, an identity all its own. I’ve spent many memorable days there, including some days in my youth that were so memorable that I can’t remember a thing except the raw oysters and Hurricanes (the name of a potent local cocktail) that provided sustenance. I wish that proud city and all her inhabitants good luck and God’s blessings as they prepare for this trial.

No harvesting today, instead we devote the day to vineyard sampling. As the grapes color up and pick up sweetness during the late Summer into Autumn, we continually monitor the path from under-ripe fruit to ripeness. The vineyard staff regularly goes through each planting, looking for potential problems such as bird or insect damage, or the onset of mildew in the grape bunches. As they walk through, they pick berries at random from the grape bunches, and place these grapes in a plastic bag. Once the bag is full, the grapes are brought to the winery for processing and analysis. The bag of grapes are emptied into a

(clean) woman’s stocking and gently mashed to extract juice. The stocking is squeezed with a moderate force until enough juice (about 150

ml.) is extracted.

[A digression… This process used to be carried out by our vineyard director, and it used to be a source of embarrassment for him to have to go buy several pairs of woman’s stockings at the start of each sampling season. Now we have a female lab director who does this work. While the vineyard director no longer has to experience the embarrassment of buying stockings once a year, the otherwise all male production staff is always somewhat uncomfortable to see a pair of recently washed woman’s stockings drying on the back of our lab director’s office chair.] This juice is split into two glasses, one to be analyzed chemically for sugar content, acidity, and pH. The second glass is tasted by our winery staff to be judged for ripeness. When the juice tastes ripe-- when flavors and aromas are plentiful and the mouthfeel of the juice is ripe and round with good balancing acidity-- we know it is time to pick. No such verdict is reached today, as all the vineyards sampled are still under-ripe.

Today’s weather is variable, as is often the case in Japan. But the lowering sky and gusty winds provide relief from the oppressive heat that is a constant companion during a Japanese August. The picking crew of students is in fine spirits, enjoying the outdoor work, with its views of the mountains of the Chichibu region, blue in the distance. Work is slow and orderly as the students find their pace. They’ve been here before, being veterans of many, many harvests. The job can be a bit tedious, moving from vine to vine, culling out good fruit to go into one picking container, and bad fruit (destined for the compost pile) to go into another. But smiles abound, the excitement and good cheer a natural part of the start of harvest, when we can begin a new, hope-filled page in the cycle of our work. Of course, the students are also happy because they know that lunch will be a hot bowl of ramen at the Chinese restaurant down the road from the vineyard. Regardless, it is nice to see everyone enjoying themselves. This is as it should be during harvest, a time to celebrate nature’s generosity, a time to revel in the earth’s bounty, a time to freely join in an act as old as time that still has the power to renew us all. My only regret is the lack of song as we work. In most every wine region I’ve worked, the harvesting of grapes is accompanied by song. In California it is typically the music of Mexican-American laborers that carries across the vine rows to keep us moving. In Australia, it was some ribald versions of local folk songs that accompanied the soft sounds of the secateurs cutting fruit from vines. In Japan, for whatever reason, we don’t sing in the vineyards. Today I tried to rally those nearby by singing a Japanese song, but the only songs I know are children’s songs that I have learned from my young daughter. Given the stern looks that greeted my attempts to sing, it was apparent that my picking partners preferred silence. So, the cadence for the Japanese harvest is to be relative silence, with a periodic joke shouted across the tops of the vines. Not bad. But I still can’t help but wonder… was my version of “Momotaro San" all that bad?

With a small crew of winery staff and students from Coco Romi Gakuen we headed off to Saitama prefecture to bring in the first grapes of the season. Winemakers around the world are always asked, at the outset of each harvest, the same question: “How did this year’s grapes turn out?" I suppose, for those winegrowers working with a single grape variety grown in a fairly delimited geographical reason, this question so early on might make some sense, and be answerable. Here at Coco we use a wide range of grapes. This year, for instance, we will get grapes from at least 23 different vineyards, spread over seven of Japan’s prefectures. The climates of each of these vineyards is different, ranging from warm region winegrowing around the Kanto Plain (Yamanashi, Saitama, Tochigi) to very cool climate growing up in Hokkaido. To compound the variation, we will receive at least 20 different wine grape varieties in quantities sufficient to make a barrel or more. Each of these grape varieties responds differently to the specific weather patterns of any given place and vintage. The complex interplay of so many sites and so many cultivars means that, while we start harvesting today, we will be harvesting other varieties from other plots on through mid-November. So, when asked how this vintage “turned out", as I was by a journalist on hand to view the start of harvest, I have to reply with the truthful but boring “Too early to tell" or “Some great, some good, some bad". We start, as always, with high hopes, and dreams of good, honest wines to bring smiles to the faces of our customers…

As The Grape Grows

Quality wine making is really a very simple pursuit, since it hinges completely and totally on one central idea… finding perfectly ripe grapes and handling them gently.
If we can get wonderfully ripe grapes, wine making then becomes a simple matter of stewardship: protecting the quality born in the vineyard. Luckily, we have the vineyards of "COCOROMI GAKUEN", just above our winery. The soil is rocky and shallow, allowing for good drainage. Combining these
favorable factors, and adding students committed to quality grape growing, you may craft a product of distinction. The focus is quality, not profit.
Many people ask me if it is possible to make great wine in Japan. My answer is always the same: "Yes, it is possible". We have just begun to really explore Japan's potential for high-quality wine production. Even at this early stage, though, I do believe that there are reasonable quantities of excellent wine available, wine that can proudly be compared to those from other winegrowing countries. I hope you can count COCO's wines among this group.

See You At The Winery

We cordially invite you to come visit our winery in Ashikaga.
Our Guest room is open all year round, except for five days during the winter and another five days during the summer holidays. In-depth winery tours are available every Saturday and Sunday, though we advise that you make a reservation as space is limited. Our staff is waiting to welcome you, and to show you our vineyards, tank room, and wine cellars. You will also be able to view the process of sparkling wine production in our specially-built caves. Here we blend two distinct traditions-Japanese grape-growing and the French-inspired methode champenoise production techniques-to produce our Novo wines.
Lunch is also available on the weekends, served in our kitchen gallery. (For Details & Reservations, Please Call: 0284-42-1194).