Hamada Vineyard

Hamada Vineyard sits on the snow-heavy hills of Tatsuppu in Mikasa, a former coal town in Hokkaido's Sorachi valley that has become one of Japan's most serious cold-climate wine zones. Its founder reached the slope by an unlikely road. Hirofumi Hamada spent thirty-two years as a cancer researcher — a University of Tokyo-trained physician who led a molecular-biology therapy division at thirty-five and held professorships in Sapporo and Tokyo — before leaving the laboratory at fifty-six to grow grapes. He studied farming in Sapporo, took up Mikasa's offer of land to new growers, and planted his first vines in 2015. The estate is a three-person family operation: Hamada, his wife Kyoko, also a doctor, and their son Reo, who now runs the vineyard and carries the label forward. Roughly five hectares are planted to Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Bacchus and Pinot Noir on a hilltop of wide day-night temperature swings and deep winter snow. Fruit is hand-sorted at harvest and, since 2021, vinified in the family's own cellar, Levande Tapcorine. The barrel-fermented Chardonnay, built around bright northern acidity, is the wine they consider their signature. First vintage was 2018; the bottles reaching us are the 2024s, made after a record harvest that followed two hard years of disease and bird damage the family met by adapting rather than retreating.