Winery Story

Grace Wine

My first visit to Grace Winery in Yamanashi, Japan, was in 2003. I was living in Japan at the time, having just passed both the theory and practical parts of the Master of Wine exam, and was deep into writing my dissertation — on export opportunities for Japanese Koshu wines, as it happened. Grace was already at the forefront of high-quality Koshu production back then. Shigekazu Misawa had recently begun working with Professor Denis Dubourdieu to discover better ways of making Koshu-based wines, and his daughter Ayana was just beginning her enology studies at Bordeaux University. The ambition in the air was palpable.

Koshu, Refined

If I am honest, the Koshu wines from the early 2000s were rather characterless — lacking concentration and persistence, and most needed to be consumed within a couple of years. My conclusion at the time was that export opportunities were limited. My most recent visit, more than twenty years later, tells a very different story....