Katsunuma

The Place

Katsunuma (勝沼) is a small district in Koshu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, an hour and a half by train west of Tokyo. It sits at the eastern edge of the Kofu Basin, on south-facing slopes where vines have been cultivated since at least the late Heian period. For most of that history, the grapes were table fruit — Koshu shipped to Edo merchants as a delicacy — and the modern wine identity is barely 150 years old.

The Beginning

In 1877, two young men from Katsunuma — Masanari Takano and Ryūken Tsuchiya — were sent to France by the prefectural government to learn winemaking. They returned and established the Dai-Nihon Yamanashi Budōshu Kaisha that same year. It was the first Japanese-led commercial winery and the direct ancestor of what would become Mercian. Their initial wines were technical failures — the climate, the equipment, and the unfamiliarity all conspired — but the precedent was set.

The Yamada-Takuma attempt in Kōfu in 1875 actually predated the Katsunuma project, but Takano and Tsuchiya’s return from France with proper training is the moment Katsunuma became the seat of Japanese winemaking. Their lineage runs through nearly every serious producer working in the area today.

The Town Today

Roughly thirty wineries operate within Katsunuma district itself, with another sixty or so spread across the broader Yamanashi prefecture. The density is unusual — visitors can walk between four or five small estates in an afternoon. The town’s tourist hub, Katsunuma Budō no Oka ("Grape Hill"), runs a public wine cellar where visitors can taste roughly two hundred Yamanashi wines for a flat fee.

The major historical estates — Marufuji (Rubaiyat), Lumière, Grace, Aruga Branca, Mercian Katsunuma — sit alongside dozens of smaller domains. The contemporary natural-wine community, including Kurambon and Domaine Hide, has emerged from the same hillsides.

Why It Matters

Katsunuma is the only place in Japan where you can stand on a hillside and see a thousand years of grape culture, the birth of modern Japanese winemaking, and the contemporary natural-wine scene all at once. The comparison to Burgundy’s Côte d’Or — small, dense, historic, terroir-aware — is overused but not unfounded.

Details

• Location: Koshu City, Yamanashi Prefecture
• Elevation: 350–700m
• Soils: Alluvial gravel and sediment over granite/andesite base
• Wineries: ~30 within Katsunuma district
• Signature variety: Koshu (above all), with Muscat Bailey A second
• Visitor center: Katsunuma Budō no Oka (Grape Hill)