Tokyo wine blending the flavors of sea and soil

Tuesday, 4 February, 2025
Nippon, Kosugi Satoko
A winery located in central Tokyo is attracting attention for its offerings.

Japan’s burgeoning wine scene mainly features labels from Yamanashi, Nagano, and Hokkaidō. But a winery surprisingly located in central Tokyo is attracting attention for its offerings. A look at what "Tokyo wine" has to offer.

Supermarket rooftop vineyards

The Fukagawa area in Tokyo’s Kōtō City grew up around the Fukagawa Fudōdō temple in the Edo period (1603–1868), and still has hints of those long-ago days. This is where Fukagawa Winery Tokyo has its base, some 15 minutes and one subway change from Tokyo Station. After alighting at Monzen-nakachō Station and passing through a business district, you step into a quiet residential neighborhood filled with the pleasant aromas of fruit and yeast.

Fukagawa Winery was founded in 2016 on the idea that the owners wanted an urban winery where people could enjoy local wine without having to journey to the countryside. In late September 2024, when I visit, the staff are deep into crafting their latest vintage. The fermentation room is lined with round plastic tanks around a meter tall and a meter across. Each is filled with pale green grapes with the skins left on, fermenting away with a gentle bubbling sound. Watching as these grapes, a variety called Niagara grown in Yamanashi Prefecture, transform slowly into wine through the work of natural yeast is somehow soothing.

The winery began making wine from grapes grown in Fukagawa itself in 2020. When I wonder aloud, “Where could there be a vineyard in this town?” Sommelier Irei Sayumi answers with a smile: “It’s on the roof of the supermarket in front of the station.”

They started out growing vines in pots, but the containers were so small that they stunted vine growth. While the staff searched for a solution, they discovered a method used by the winery Rooftop Reds, which grows grapes atop a Brooklyn building. When Fukagawa started using the same large-scale planters for its own vines, it finally achieved healthy growth. The cultivation is being led by a major contracting company researching rooftop gardening.

Tokyo does not exactly have an ideal climate for grape cultivation. It lacks the large temperature shifts of early spring that make rural growing regions so successful, for one thing. The staff were also worried that this last summer’s fierce heat would lead to diseases or insufficient sugar levels, but Irei says with relief, "We harvested a total of 40 kilograms of Delaware and Niagara varieties, and they were plenty sweet."

Tokyo Bay as wine cellar

The winery is also trying new things in other areas. Taking a hint from stories about the delicious wine being recovered from sunken ships, it has undertaken to age wine underwater in Tokyo Bay.

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