By June the heat is building and the weather has changed character entirely.
I wanted to go somewhere.
I wanted to drink Japanese wine.
So I went looking for something, and found the festival I'm about to describe.
Bar Sendai 2025 â the wine festival of the City of Trees
20â22 June, at Kotodai Park.
About Bar Sendai â official site
More than thirty wineries with stands, most of them from Tohoku, so you can drink your way across the wines of northern Japan. Local restaurants had stands too, and the food was serious.
When I first found it online I pictured a local get-together â not very big, pleasantly modest. Going there corrected me. Most of the crowd were probably locals, and the place was alive. The size of the site, the number of stands, the press of people.
So many people enjoying Japanese wine now. Watching all those happy faces around me lifted my own mood for the whole day.
Which wine first? I'd done no research at all, and with that many wines on offer I regretted it immediately.
Then this caught my eye.
Vespinae, Riesling Lion 2024 â Hanamaki, Iwate
Riesling Lion 2024 â Vespinae online shop
Why this one? Because I love German Riesling and I respect it. The way it changes face according to the ground and the grower makes it, to me, as mysterious a grape as Pinot Noir.
So I badly wanted to know what Vespinae does with Riesling on Iwate soil.
Riesling Lion, incidentally, is a cross between Koshu Sanjaku â a Koshu type with larger, more numerous bunches â and Riesling. Suntory made the cross in Yamanashi. Someone brought it north to Iwate, grew it, and it turned out well there. Today about 90% of all Riesling Lion is Iwate fruit.
The variety carries big bunches and yields generously, and it's said to be full of fruit flavour.
Almost clear, faintly yellow â the transparency of a young Riesling, and it reads young. The muscat aroma that Riesling gives. No rubber or petrol (for the record, I adore that smell in aged Riesling). And there's a lemon note of the kind you find in Koshu.
On the palate there's firm yellow-citrus acidity, but also orange, apple and white peach â juicy fruit, real volume, a tightly woven wine. I'd like it with crab landed at Hanamaki.
The person pouring, I think one of the growers, explained it with real enthusiasm. That made the glass better.
Next I got curious about a barrique fermentation, which is still slightly unusual in Japan. Would it come out thick and unctuous?
Gomaibashi Winery, Merlot 2021 Barrique â Morioka, Iwate
Gomaibashi Winery Merlot 2021 Barrique (new oak)
2021 suited barrique ageing, they said, so they made it â but they buy barrels chosen not to push the oak too far forward. I'd have liked more explanation; the person on the stand didn't look entirely at home with the questions.
The oak is plainly there on the nose. Blackcurrant fruit too, but oak and fruit hadn't yet mixed. Would time fix it?
On the palate there's dark-fruit sweetness, but the astringency is weak, and I couldn't see it building complexity from here.
I wanted a really good red, so I walked the whole site, read the programme, thought about it, and landed on this.
Le Cinq Winery, Pinot Noir 2022 â Niigata City, Niigata
A year in French oak. Firm acidity with fruit alongside it â not a light Pinot Noir, they told me.
Oh, this is very good. Red with the faintest orange cast.
Some sediment visible, which suggests plenty of matter in it.
The nose is lovely â elegant Pinot Noir expressed without any dressing-up.
The moment it's in your mouth there's volume of red and black fruit, then smoke arrives in the middle, and you want to stay in that comfortable finish indefinitely. Like tart strawberries, blueberries and dark cherries packed in tight. On the second mouthful there was a faint whisky sweetness in the aftertaste.
The vineyard is over towards the sea: very hot in summer, sea winds in winter, and not much snow settling.
A really good wine. I had a whole plan for what to drink, and now I wanted a second glass of this.
I resisted, and went to the other wine I'd been eyeing.
Tsugaru Winery, Jomon no Kiseki 2023 â Tsuruta, Aomori
Jomon no Kiseki 2023 â Tsugaru Winery
Made from Steuben. Steuben originates in New York State â and Tsugaru happens to sit on the same latitude as New York, which is a pleasing coincidence. The variety came to Japan in 1952, when national policy was pushing farmers towards crops other than rice. Yamagata and Iwate grew it too; today Aomori accounts for most of the production. As a table grape it's registered under Japan's GI (geographical indication) system.
I've eaten it fresh once. Tough skin, deep black, and the flesh extremely sweet.
Sugar at harvest runs 20â26 Brix. The fruit is then shade-dried for around two months, by which point it's said to reach about 30.
Deep purple. The nose is shiso and candied cherry.
The palate â I'd expected an Amarone-like full-bodied dry red, and it's sweet. Not as sweet as a Recioto, but sweet.
Plenty of tannin. Sweet and astringent at once. There's a slight spritz, as though fermentation was stopped part-way, and smoke as well. The wine is 14.5% alcohol. Normally, if fermentation has carried you to 14.5%, you end up dry â which tells you how high the sugar really got during that shade-drying.
I asked afterwards: Tsugaru Winery holds a "fruit wine" licence, and making anything above 15% requires a "sweetened fruit wine" licence instead. Personally I'd love to see a bone-dry Jomon no Kiseki pushed to something like 15.5%, powerful in the Amarone manner. There's enough acidity and smoke in it to carry that. A genuinely interesting wine.
I'd been at Akiu Winery that morning and had drunk there too, so between the alcohol and the hunger I called it a day. I'd wanted to eat from the food stands while drinking, but that's hard on your own â and, happily for the festival, it was so busy there wasn't a seat anywhere. A thoroughly good time. I'm going again next year.
To finish: a gyoza set.
This is the English edition of an article first written in Japanese. æ„æŹèȘçăŻăăĄă.