The Secret History of Japanese Wine

I spent last winter making sake at a fourteenth generation brewery near the Japan Sea, a job I started a few years ago as research for my book,Water, Wood, and Wild Things，并且随着Yamanaka Onsen镇成为我的家。春季，当起泡的发酵罐平静下来并装瓶时，我的想法从sake到更古老的饮料：亚搏电竞.

这个故事最常重复 - 在日本除了150年前，日本的酿酒始于欧洲矿体学。亚搏电竞但是，我在奇基扎克·希（Kikizake-Shi）教科书（如侍酒师的手册中）读过日本的人们在与西方的任何相遇之前都发酵葡萄。日本前现代葡萄制成的含酒精饮料通常被称为Budoshu（葡萄酒酒精），以将其与葡萄酒区分开，但我想知道：有没有有意义的区别？亚搏电竞为了找出答案，我向内陆前往东京西南部Yamanashi县现代葡萄酒行业的中心。亚搏电竞

To reach Yamanashi's Kofu Basin, I drove eight hours—along winding mountain roads, through long tunnels and across deep ravines—arriving in a landscape more dry and open than the mossy densely forested Japan I know. I parked among budding vineyards under a cloudless sky, and climbed a long staircase to Daizenji temple, where a thousand-year-old wooden bosatsu holds a bunch of grapes, signifying their medicinal value. Today, Daizenji's head monk and his daughter make palatable wine from Koshu (an indiginous varietal) that wouldn't disappoint if you ordered the house white at a restaurant. The head monk's wife, acting as docent, told me that the famous travelling monk Gyoki founded the temple and taught viticulture to local people after an encounter with Yakushi Nyorai, a god of healing. (A similar story exists where I live, in Yamanaka Onsen, but it was by the hot spring that Gyoki met Yakushi Nyorai and founded a temple; I marveled that this monk had travelled distances on foot that were exhausting for me by car.)

即使Gyoki的故事是伪经的，记录表明，有1316名农民在Kofu盆地耕种了50英亩的葡萄，主要是为了进食。Koshu葡萄与从高加索（当今佐治亚州所在的地方）沿着丝绸之路带来的库存有关，该股票大约在1300年前到达这里，在旅途中杂交了野生葡萄。Koshu被列为Vitis Vinifera，该物种涵盖了最受欢迎的葡萄葡萄，有传言说农民发酵水果不足以适合餐桌。亚搏电竞野生葡萄的种子被称为Yama-Budo的种子在由猎人采集者乔蒙（Jomon）制造的漆粘土船上发掘出来清酒。

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And yet, as I discovered when I left the temple and began visiting wineries, most Yamanshi winemakers associate their craft with Europe. But do Japan's exciting contemporary wines have some connection to an ancient history of budoshu? Each winery I visited gave me a different answer, and their stories took me on a journey back through time.

Kofu, Yamanashi's capital, is a city of postmodern midrise boxes built after the sixteenth-century castle town was burnt to the ground by American bombs during WWII. But the hills above the city are green with vineyards and orchards, interspersed with fruit stands and tasting rooms that look like chateaux.

New leaves still sparkled on the mountainsides the day I visited98wines. Veteran winemaker Yuki Hirayama bottled his first vintage there in 2018 after decades of working for well-respected Yamanashi vintners. His eclectic record collection is on display in a tasting room built like a kominka, or farmhouse, with wooden posts and beams and a tile roof. There's an espresso machine for the weekends, when friends and customers linger, soaking up Hirayama's worldly charm. He directed my attention to thick glass panels in the floor, revealing a pair of amphora, clay urns like the qvervi used to make the world's first known wine, in Georgia around 6000 B.C.E.

Hirayama使用Koshu葡萄制作一种精致的口渴白葡萄酒，与许多日本菜肴的苦味和鲜味搭配。亚搏电竞他还种植了1920年代美国和欧洲葡萄种植的日本品种Muscat Bailey A。Hirayama告诉我，他想制作反映其起源的葡萄酒，只有Koshu和M亚搏电竞uscat Bailey A才真正适合这种气候，这比世界上大多数葡萄酒葡萄蓬勃发展的地方都更潮湿和潮湿。

A metal door with the patina of a Richard Serra sculpture leads to a climate-controlled cellar, where Hirayama's business partner, Akiko Yoshidome, and a young man who is their only employee were sealing bottles of their third vintage with pink wax. They distribute to only eight wine shops in Japan, and they were expecting customers at the winery to pick up the new vintage the following day. Hirayama put me to work sticking on labels—blue and red line drawings by his friend塔雷克·阿巴尔（Tarek Abbar）来自西班牙 - 虽然他准备了午餐。

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When the meal was ready, Hirayama called us up to the open-air tasting room and seated me facing a view of Mount Fuji. He served improvised tacos, small buckwheat crepes with avocado and braised lamb, and poured his effervescent white and rosé into short wine glasses. The rosé hinted at wild strawberry jam and a faintly medicinal fragrance of yomogi, Japanese mugwort. The white had a gently herbaceous aroma that mingled with the smell of weeds and dirt carried on the breeze from the vineyards. It buzzed on my tongue like kumquat.

广山山在法国学习光刻，然后返回日本并在城堡办公室找到工作Mercian，这是一亚搏电竞种从日本首家私人商业酿酒厂的Daihatsu Dai-Nihon Yamanashi Budoshu种植的酿酒厂。Daihatsu dai-nihon Yamanashi Budoshu于1877年在该国的迅速现代化中成立于该国的迅速现代化，将两个年轻人Masanari Takano和Ryuken Tsuchiya送往法国学习酿酒。亚搏电竞但是他们以法国风格的葡萄酒并没有立即获得葡萄酒（20亚搏电竞世纪初的流行日本葡萄酒是用蜂蜜和药用草药加固的，并以健康补品销售）。ChateâuMercian品牌是在战后时期后来创建的，目的是使他们所谓的“真正的葡萄酒”在1960年代开始受到国际赞誉。亚搏电竞

ChateâuMercian派Hirayama到Burgundy三年学习酿酒。亚搏电竞他返回在Mercian酿造25年，前往新亚搏电竞西兰，南非，智利和阿根廷的酿酒厂。yabo电竞投注然后，他成为另一家Yamanashi酿酒亚搏电竞厂Katsunuma Jyozo的首席酿酒师九年，一直梦想着有一天开设自己的酿酒厂。他解释说，98Wines的名字是指在竞争中得分低于100分亚搏电竞的优质但不完美的葡萄酒。他说，通过来自世界各地的人们之间的沟通和协作，它们可以成为完美的100甚至排行榜。

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Hirayama告诉我，那些被派往法国的年轻人正在寻找技术 - 从至少使酿酒师的技巧与大米质量一样重要，但酿酒量实际上是关于种植葡萄的。亚搏电竞Hirayama希望葡萄为自己说话。他声称自己只能粉碎束，并控制温度，而果汁则用野生酵母发酵。但是，当我问他，他制作的葡萄酒是否与Budoshu 亚搏电竞Jomon可能做出任何联系时，他说不，那是萨鲁·扎克（Saru-Zake），猴子葡萄酒。

The next morning I visitedKatsunuma jyozo, a third-generation winery run by the three Aruga brothers that's large enough to export wine to Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, France, Italy and the US. The oldest brother, Hirotaka, has an obsessive highly-technical nature, and took over as head winemaker after Hirayama departed to start 98wines. The youngest brother, Sho, loves nature and spending time outdoors, so he manages the vineyards. And the middle brother, Jun, is the outgoing one—with the polish of a young man who spent time in Tokyo—in charge of marketing. Eager to share the family story, Jun welcomed me to their tasting room in a 19th century machiya, a nearly-black post-and beam two-story house where their ancestors cultivated silkworms before turning to winemaking. Their father wanted to tear down the old machiya and build something modern, but a Frenchman convinced him of the value in old buildings that convey a sense of heritage.

As he poured me glass after glass of Koshu wine to taste, Jun Aruga explained that the label—designed by a Japanese artist who lived for years in Portugal, is a dad joke. The family name, Aruga, sounds a little like the Portuguese word for wine cellar or winery, adega, so they call themselves Adega du' Aruga, a play on words enhanced by the vintage Portuguese look of the hand-drawn lettering.

同意葡萄牙具有历史意义。日本's first contact with European wine was likely through Portuguese missionaries, in the sixteenth century when Jesuits brought wine to Kyushu, in southern Japan. Imported wine became popular among some elites. At least one was inspired to make his own: from 1627 to 1632 the head of the Kokura domain in Northern Kyushu, Tadatoshi Hosokawa, ordered the production of budoshu from wild grapes and black soybeans. But around that time the missionaries were exiled for meddling with politics, and Christianity banned for more than two centuries while Japan remained sealed off to most foreign trade. If winemaking continued, it was kept secret to avoid dangerous associations with Christianity.

1853年之后，美国准将马修·佩里（Matthew C. Perry）和他的黑船队迫使日本与西方贸易和外交关系。到20世纪，欧洲葡萄风靡一时。阿鲁加兄弟（Aruga Brothers）的祖父于1937年开设了Katsunuma jyozo，以制作欧洲葡萄酒。亚搏电竞但是近年来，兄弟俩将重点转移到了日本葡萄和风土上。他们撕毁了赤霞珠，他们的父亲偏爱他们的父亲，并用科修和马斯喀特·贝利（Muscat Bailey A.

当我品尝Katsunuma jyozo的不同表达时Jun Aruga从各种风格中进行了精心设计的Koshu告诉我，他们的生产规模（酿酒厂占据了旧的Asahi仓库）可以进行实验。亚搏电竞大多数Koshu葡萄酒亚搏电竞都是年轻而新鲜的，但是Katsunuma jyozo自90年代以来就一直在老化的葡萄酒。他们十岁的Aruga Branca Pipa让我想起了一场干ries，味道像精致的Dashi。阿鲁加说，它与像伊瓦纳这样的苦乐参半的河鱼搭配得很好。由马斯喀特·贝利（Muscat Bailey A）制成的轻桶龄红色具有野生浆果的亮度别针ot Noir, with subtle earthiness and floral notes of black tea; it's a good match with tuna belly and wasabi, Aruga told me.

In a small vineyard near the tasting room, Aruga showed me a few remaining rows of Cabernet, grown on vertical trellises like the ones in France. When weeds grow tall around the vines, he explained, they trap moisture that makes the fruit prone to disease, so growing Cabernet this way in Japan necessitates using herbicide. Crouching to pick the vertically-trellised grapes in the brutal late-summer sun is terribly strenuous.

接下来，他向我展示了Koshu以日本风格生长的Trellises，形成了高葡萄藤（如欧洲凉棚式嵌带），因此您可以站在他们的阴影中并伸手去拿它们。这样，葡萄藤的通风很好，就像传统的日本房屋一样，这些房屋旨在在日本潮湿的气候中呼吸。我们坐在没有商业化学物质的Koshu葡萄藤下面的甜味草中的野花中，与邻近葡萄园中的裸露污垢形成鲜明对比，就像他们签约的大多数农场一样。阿鲁加斯正在努力证明除草剂实际上创造了不必要的工作和费用。

阿鲁加（Aruga）带我去家族餐厅（Kaze）（意思是风）的午餐，就像罗马式大教堂的街机一样建造，带有高拱形天花板和拱形窗户。清除了Carpaccio和起泡酒之后，穿着白色高高的Toques切成亚搏电竞薄片牛排桌的厨师，配以新鲜磨碎的芥末。当我喝了另一杯老式的koshu时，它与肉类奇妙的搭配时，我问阿鲁加，他是否可以告诉我Budoshu和Wine之间的区别。亚搏电竞他解释说，他认为这与20世纪初期的出口规则或税收有关。标准清酒瓶的尺寸与标准的酒瓶不同，并且由于Yamanashi Koshu葡萄的糖相对较低，因此通常会加强培养成品的酒精亚搏电竞含量 - 因此，将其称为Budoshu，日本葡萄酒商不必符合国际葡萄酒法规。亚搏电竞

I asked Aruga if he knew anything about budoshu made by grape farmers before Yamanashi's wine industry was formalized. He didn't, but he knew just the guy to answer my question.

我们拉到一家小商店叫Budou-batake，这仅意味着“葡萄田”，Jun Aruga向我介绍了一位身穿泥染牛仔裤和一个球盖Hitoshi Mitsumori的农民。Mitsumori带领我们从他的葡萄园棚里下坡，那里的白山羊在葡萄藤下面放牧，并解释了他如何与一群农民一起制作Budoshu，就像在工业化和现代税法正式化Yamanashi的葡萄酒行业之前做到的那样。亚搏电竞他向我们展示了他们过去用来粉碎葡萄的手动摇动几个世纪的大豆磨坊，旁边是他们现在使用的略微上升的机动摩托车。压碎的葡萄穿过溜槽进入棚子，农民将它们从桶中转移到新闻界。然后将压榨的果汁发酵在一个旧的搪瓷清酒坦克（与我们在Yamanaka的啤酒厂使用的同样）。如果天气太凉爽，无法繁殖，Mitsumori会添加商业酵母以防止变质，否则，他可以让野生酵母进行工作。

Mitsumori热情地回答了我的问题，并在我们坐在酿酒棚里的破碎的校椅上，向我们倾注了一杯桃红葡萄酒。亚搏电竞我急切地记下了他对农民制造的布修历史的阐述。我们ipped饮的布杜修（Budoshu）由桌子葡萄制成，以使其既圆润又易于饮用的方式，例如冰冷的umeshu（李子（Plum corsial））。它并不是像曾经闻名的含糖纪念品Yamanashi那样cloy。亚搏电竞他也有一个干燥的桃红和白色，他说，当他忘了停止发酵时，他犯了错误。

Farmers growing grapes to sell as fruit used to work too hard to drink much, Mitsumori told me, but they made their own budoshu to share at weddings and funerals. They would ferment unsellable grapes with any other excess or damaged fruit they had on hand before it spoiled. When tax regulations made homebrewing illegal in the early twentieth century, farmers began burying fermenting crocks in their field or hiding them in bamboo groves. The problem, says Mitsumori, was that if you made a really good batch you'd want to share it, but then word would get around and inevitably someone would rat you out.

如今，农民将其Budoshu统一在特殊的许可下，由Mitsumori家庭持有，并经过几代人。他们带来最好的葡萄炫耀：如果他们不这样做，其他农民将对他们的收成混合在一起。这个布希的一半以上是用Isshobin瓶装的，1.8升清酒瓶，适合农民。其余的用未标记的750毫升葡萄酒瓶密封，并在Budou-Batake商店出售亚搏电竞（我带了几个回家）。

那么，我问Mitsumori，Budoshu和Wine有什么区别？亚搏电竞他说，没什么笑。除了可以用大型薄皮桌子葡萄（或任何手头）制成的Budoshu，而葡萄酒应由小皮肤厚的葡萄酒葡萄制成。亚搏电竞但是我可以想到至少有一些由维特斯·拉布鲁斯（Vitus Labrus亚搏电竞ca）的餐桌葡萄制成的葡萄酒，例如美国东海岸的康科德（Concord）和尼亚加拉（Niagara），因此似乎没有区别。

我已经完成了关于葡萄酒的报道，但是在我离开山山之前，我拜访了几个亚搏电竞熟人，尤基和保罗。就在我要回家时，他们提出要向我展示他们的蔬菜情节。他们随便指出一些Yama Budo，野葡萄，Yuuki的父亲Osamu Ishihara用来酿酒，我的眼睛亮了。亚搏电竞

实践自然农业的伊西哈拉（Ishihara）告诉我，他只酿造了几次葡萄酒。亚搏电竞他的一个朋友每年都用来给他带来自制的Yama Budoshu，他认识一个90年代的女人，她一直在自己的一些葡萄中永远生产自己的酒。亚搏电竞很难知道有多少人为乡村葡萄酒供个人消费，这不是他们吹牛的东西。亚搏电竞我问Ishihara，您不认为由于日本有野葡萄，人们可能一直在历史上发酵它们吗？他说，当然，然后给我我自己的Yama Budo在家种植。

With my yama-budo vine in the passenger seat, I drove away from the budding vineyards of Yamanashi, back towards flooded rice fields reflecting the sky as farmers pushed seedlings into the soft mud. The complete history of budoshu may be buried in the memory of people long gone, but by repeating the story that winemaking in Japan began in the nineteenth century, surely we are missing something important.

我想到了我从长野野（Nagano）的休息站捡亚搏电竞起的红酒，该酒是由Goichi Wines用Yama Budo制成的；它的肉桂香味柔和地呈山泥，炖浆果，呈单宁。我想知道它是否品尝到乔蒙（Jomon）在他们漆的粘土锅中所做的类似于乔蒙（Jomon）的味道。我回家感到某些日本与葡萄的关系具有深厚的根源，并对酿酒师推动它进入未来感到兴奋。亚搏电竞