Japanese Wine
日本ワイン
Wine in Japan can be traced back to the 8th-century hermit, Gyōki, who planted vines at the Daizen Temple. A nascent wine industry began with the dispatch of two ex-samurai, Tsuchiya Ryuken and Takano Masanari, to study winemaking in 1877 in France. Hybrid varieties were routinely planted because of their tolerance of wet climates and resistance to disease. Today, the indigenous variety Koshu and the international grapes, Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, dominate Japanese wine production, although only one in five bottles is made from fresh Japanese grapes. These are mostly grown in the four main wine-growing prefectures of Yamanashi, Nagano, Yamagata, and Hokkaido.