Climate change has helped make the small Japanese town of Yoichi the toast of pinot noir connoisseurs, with gradually warming temperatures encouraging locals to try their hand at the delicate grape variety over the past two decades.
Yoichi was well known as the home of Nikka Whisky. But it burst into the viticultural limelight five years ago, when the 2017 Nana-Tsu-Mori pinot noir from the local Domaine Takahiko winery was featured on the wine list of Copenhagen’s globally acclaimed Noma restaurant.
A bottle of that prized wine, which once sold for around US$30, is now offered by resellers in Japan for about US$560. Other wines from the town, which is located on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido and now has about 20 wineries and 70 vineyards, have also won their fair share of accolades.
But Yoichi’s farmers fret that even before the town’s reputation has had a chance to be embraced by mainstream consumers, recent rapid rises in temperatures and potentially more rain during the harvesting season could mean that it will become difficult to grow the pinot noir grape here.
“It’s like a roller coaster,” says Domaine Takahiko owner Takahiko Soga, who founded his winery in 2010.
Barrels of pinot noir wine sit inside a newly built underground wine cellar at Domaine Takahiko winery. Photo: Reuters
Soga says he once thought Yoichi’s temperatures during the growing season were roughly similar to France’s Alsace region, but then they reached levels on par with Burgundy, which produces some of the world’s finest pinot noirs.