Urban winery in traditional Kanazawa townhouse

Today, Japan has around 500 wineries everywhere from Hokkaido to Okinawa. Many local governments are focusing efforts on wine as key to attracting visitors, including from overseas. However, as most wineries are located some distance from major rail stations, visitors must change to local trains or buses, take expensive taxis or rent cars — in which case the driver cannot drink the wine.

But what if there was a winery within walking distance of a major station? That was the idea that inspired the creation of Kanazawa Winery.

It is located in the heart of a neighborhood just 10 minutes by car and 20 minutes on foot from Ishikawa Prefecture’s Kanazawa Station. In fact, it is right beside Omicho Market, which is visited by many tourists who come to Kanazawa. The winery’s home is one of Kanazawa’s classic wooden machiya townhouses, which was built during the Taisho Era (1912-26) and is redolent with the history, traditions and culture of this district of the city. One would hardly believe that wine is being made on the first floor of a wooden building that looks so typical of a castle town.

We spoke to Shinjiro Imura, Kanazawa Winery’s representative director and chief winemaker.

A native of Kanazawa, Imura returned home after graduating from university and joined a local advertising agency, but left his office job in 1997 to become a farmer. He began growing cereals and vegetables organically. In 2002, he founded a company to manufacture and sell processed goods made principally from the organic agricultural produce grown on his company’s farm. Mainly reusing abandoned arable land, he cultivates rice, other cereals and grapes on one of Japan’s largest farmland holdings (around 180 hectares), located on the outskirts of Kanazawa and the northern Noto Peninsula. While most urban wineries do not have their own vineyards and make wine using grapes purchased from contract farmers alone, Kanazawa Winery uses both its own grapes and those from contract farmers to make its wine.

“I decided over a decade ago to create a winery to breathe new life into the Noto region,” Imura said. “Noto’s thin strips of sloping land, unsuited to cultivating rice or wheat, actually have diatomaceous soil very similar to that found in Burgundy. As my company had a farm in the area and I also ran a guesthouse in a traditional-style old house there, I wondered whether I couldn’t make use of this land. So I put together a business plan, but my projections suggested it wouldn’t be possible to turn a profit.

“It was just then I discovered that someone had opened a winery in downtown Osaka in 2013. When I investigated further, I found that there were also urban wineries in places like Paris and New York. So I thought it might be possible in Kanazawa after all, and started looking for a property.”

Initially, he was envisaging a low-rise building with a basement, taking into account the weight of the fermentation tanks, but he could not find a suitable property. Then somebody suggested a machiya in Owaricho, a district that could be considered Kanazawa’s answer to the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo, in that it flourished during the Edo Period (1603-1868) and still retains much of its traditional charm today. Imura decided to buy the wooden townhouse, and established Kanazawa Winery in 2017.

“I drew up the plans myself and carried out a full renovation of the interior, retaining the original pillars,” Imura explained. “I’d always liked machiya, plus Kanazawa has a tradition of hospitality that extends as far as a room’s decor. My hope was that it would serve as a gateway for people to get to know Kanazawa Winery, serving as a catalyst for them to make the trip out to Noto.”

Imura ferments the grapes himself, having learned how to make wine at Says Farm, a winery in the Toyama Prefecture city of Himi. In the winery on the townhouse’s first floor, he produces six to eight brands of wine using only grapes grown in Ishikawa Prefecture; production amounts to 6,000 liters (12,000 bottles) per year. The second-floor French restaurant serves dishes made with organic vegetables and ingredients grown in Ishikawa Prefecture, accompanied by Imura’s wine, which is available by the glass, with pairing suggestions also on offer.

“The pandemic was terrible, of course, but the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake caused ground fissures at vineyards, so unfortunately, even farmers moved away from their land,” Imura said. “As I’m now finally in a position to concentrate on winemaking, I hope to establish the identity of our wine.”

Incidentally, this is currently the only winery in Japan that makes wine using cherry blossom yeast derived from the double-flowered cherry trees at Kanazawa’s famed Kenroku-en garden. This natural yeast was originally developed by the Industrial Research Institute of Ishikawa 10 years ago, in an effort to brew a sake characteristic of Ishikawa Prefecture, but it has been repurposed for use in wine and is also being employed in brewing beer. Imura says he is keen to switch all his brands to being organic wines made with this yeast. Wines with a distinctively Kanazawa flavor look set to reach maturity in due course.

ぶどう畑が広がる郊外ではなく、街の中にあるワイナリーをご存じだろうか。金沢市中心部にある〈金沢ワイナリー〉代表で醸造責任者の井村辰二郎は語る。

「10年以上前、能登を活性化するためにワイナリーを作ることにしましたが経営的に黒字にするのは難しい。そんな折、大阪やパリ、NYにも都市型ワイナリーができていて、金沢でもできるんじゃないかと思ったのです」。

2017年、金沢市尾張町に設立したワイナリーは大正時代の町家。その1階の醸造所では石川県産ブドウを100%用い、年間6000リットルのワインを6〜8銘柄生産し、2階のフレンチレストランで石川県産食材や有機野菜を使った料理とともに自家ワインをグラスやペアリングなどで提供する。

「コロナ禍も大変でしたが、2024年の能登半島地震ではブドウ畑に地割れも起き、残念ながら農家の人たちも土地を離れました。いろいろありましたが、これからはワイン造りに集中して、ワインのアイデンティティを確立していきたいですね」と井村は今後の抱負を述べた。

この記事の日本語記事を見る