The Okayama wine you’ll find on Parisian menus

Earlier this year, a single Japanese white wine was added to the wine list at the luxury hotel Cheval Blanc Paris, owned by LVMH Group Chairman Bernard Arnault: Domaine Tetta Chardonnay Perlant (2023 release).

The wine, which has a distinctive — and adorable — panda label, is made by Domaine Tetta, a winery located in Niimi, a city in the mountains of northwest Okayama Prefecture. The area is known as a karst plateau, underlain by limestone, and it still supports many quarries for making cement. Limestone-rich soil is a characteristic of many renowned wine regions, including Burgundy in France.

Domaine Tetta is a “domaine”-style winemaker, meaning it does everything from grape cultivation to winemaking and bottling in one location. It adheres to a creed of natural winemaking, avoiding herbicides and synthetic fertilizers and keeping chemicals to a minimum. It is still young for a winery, having commenced operations less than a decade ago, in 2016. We spoke with founder Ryuta Takahashi about how this land’s hidden potential prompted him down this pathway.

“After university I got a job, but at age 24, I returned to my hometown and took over the family construction business. However, I had always harbored a desire to start something myself, and it was then that I encountered this then-abandoned plot of farmland,” he said.

“So, in 2009, I founded a company, purchased the land and rehired the employees who had been working there. Originally, it had belonged to a local agricultural corporation, which had been cultivating small quantities of delicious table grapes there since around 1990. However, most of the vineyards had become overgrown with scrub.

“It occurred to me that revitalizing this land could be a business in itself. After looking into the soil, I discovered it was calcareous and well-suited for wine grapes. Okayama Prefecture was already known for its table grapes, and it seemed boring to do the same thing as everyone else. So I started with the idea that building a winery could bring in tourists, creating a viable business.

“In essence, the primary goal was to regenerate this piece of my hometown. And the means I chose to do that was growing wine grapes and building a winery.”

After hiring some talented grape growers and winemakers, the company released its first vintage in 2017.

Domaine Tetta currently cultivates grapes on 8 hectares of land. Its 18,000 grapevines produce 28,000 to 30,000 bottles of wine annually. Compared with other Japanese wineries, it is slightly below midsize. Its red grape varieties currently include Muscat Bailey A, cabernet franc, merlot and pinot noir, while the white grape varieties include chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and Riesling. With some table grapes as well, a total of 22 varieties are cultivated. The winery originally started with around 30 varieties, but then discarded some once it determined which best suited the land.

While Takahashi’s winery appears to be running smoothly, climate change has caused some headaches over the past two years.

“This summer there were four or five days that were over 40 degrees Celsius — unprecedented heat we never imagined. We’ve also had abnormally high rainfall and humidity. The grapes are maturing too quickly, and the damp conditions mean disease is always a worry,” he said.

He has a cautious perspective on the future. “While we have largely achieved our initial goal of regenerating this abandoned farmland, we have no plans to expand our vineyards or drastically boost sales to expand the company,” he said.

“I’m not viewing the winery’s management from a short-term perspective. Rather, I see it as a continuous cycle: making wine on this land year after year, and trying something new each year. We began our overseas expansion in 2020, so we came up against the COVID-19 pandemic. But I think the decision by Cheval Blanc Paris to carry Domaine Tetta wines is a form of recognition of our honest approach to winemaking.”

This year’s harvest began in late August. It is exciting to think what this year’s grapes might have in store for wine drinkers in Japan and around the world.

LVMHグループの総帥ベルナール・アルノーが所有するパリのラグジュアリー・ホテル〈シュヴァル・ブラン〉のレストランで、今年、1本の日本産白ワインが採用された。パンダのエチケットで知られる「テッタ・シャルドネ」である。そのワインを生み出した〈ドメーヌ・テッタ〉は岡山県の山間、新見市にあるワイナリーだ。

この地で栽培から醸造・瓶詰めまでワイン造りに関する全てをワイナリーで行うスタイルを意味するドメーヌという言葉を冠し、除草剤や合成肥料は与えず、薬剤の使用も必要最小限にし、ワイン造りを行っている。

〈ドメーヌ・テッタ〉がスタートしたのは2016年。このワイナリーが生まれてからまだ10年も経っていない。現在、ぶどうを栽培するのは8haの土地でそこに18,000本のぶどうの木が植えられ、年間2万8,000～3万本のワインを生産している。日本のワイナリーの規模でいうと、中堅の下くらいだろう。

今年のぶどうの収穫も8月下旬から始まった。どのような素晴らしいワインが生まれるのか待ち遠しい限りだ。

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