Japanese Wines Japan produces wine in two major forms---traditional wine made with grapes and rice wine, or sake. Japanese sake has been produced since the days of the samurai, whereas wines made from grapes have only recently become popular with the Japanese. Grape wineries are now a thriving industry in Japan, which is now considered one of the world's great wine producing regions. The History of Sake Sake, Japan's famous rice wine, is as steeped in history as Sumo or the Samurai. Dating back to the 3rd century, the first sake was called kuchikami no sake, or "chewing-in-the-mouth sake." Happily sake today isn't made this way but back then, rice, chestnuts and millet would be chewed by the whole village and then spat out into a tub to ferment. It was an important part of Shinto religious festivals who've protected the fields are offered sake after the harvest, and wedding celebrations and New Year's festivals aren't complete without sake on hand to bestow a benediction. Today's sake has changed much from early times. It was centuries before they discovered yeast, which greatly increased its alcohol content. The second World War also altered the recipe. Rice shortages forced brewers to develop new ways to increase their yields. By government decree, pure alcohol and glucose were added to small quantities of rice mash, increasing the yield by as much as four times. 95% of today's sake is made using this technique, left over from the war years, though connoisseurs say that the best sake is still made with just rice, koji rice and water only. Japan Japan is a well known consumer of fine wines and a world-wide investor in vineyards. What is less widely known is that some of the best research on winemaking comes from Japan - as a glance at the bibliography of any journal of oenology will confirm, and that Japan also has a significant domestic wine industry. The amount of wine made in Japan is actually greater, albeit only marginally, than that imported (64,596 hectolitres in 1992). Japan's interest in wine predates her current economic prosperity. Several of the country's wineries date from the end of the nineteenth century, but grape-growing has a much longer history and may go back as far as 1,300 years. Most of Japan's vineyards are located on the main island of Honshu. Rich soils and abundant rainfall are the main barriers to quality here. Often the solution lies in the choice of the right rootstock, but in other areas correction is required before vitis vinifera varieties will survive. The rain and the richness of the soil - together with the need to make the most of hyper-valuable land - result in yields which are far above those for typical AOC vineyards in France. Another quality factor is Japanese wine law - or the lack thereof - which directly affects consumer confidence. There are no equivalents of AOCs and few controls on chaptalization, acidification or labelling. The basic problem however is that although wines are commonly made from blends of local produce with imported wine, must or even grape, there is no legal requirement to identify the percentages involved. In the winery notes which follow, only wines labelled (voluntarily) as being made 100 per cent from local grapes are described. All the major grape species can be found in Japan: vinifera, labrusca, French-American hybrids, as well as amurenis and coignetiae . Wine styles can be broadly divided into European and Japanese, the latter often being sweetly fruity wines from labrusca grapes or hybrids. Recent years have seen the importation of French oak barrels and increasing reliance on vinifera. Interesting results have been obtained with the indigenous Koshu using different European techniques such as Muscadet-style sur lie ageing and barrel fermentation. Japanese wineries come in various sizes, from corporate-owned to boutique. Suntory and Mercian between them account for more than 40 per cent of the wine produced in Japan. Encouragingly, there is no shortage of new wineries with vinifera trained in French-style rows as opposed to the overhead canopies traditional in Japan.