Japan

Yamanashi Prefecture dates Japanese winemaking to around 1870 and calls the prefecture its birthplace: Hironori Yamada and Norihisa Takuma began making wine in earnest in 1874, and the first privately owned winery opened at Katsunuma in 1877. Muscat Bailey A, a cross of the American Bailey grape with Muscat Hamburg, was created in 1927. The OIV registered Koshu in 2010 and Muscat Bailey A in 2013, which the prefecture says opened exports to Europe.

The National Tax Agency designated Yamanashi as the first wine GI on 16 July 2013. It published labelling standards for wine on 30 October 2015, defining 'Japan wine', and enforced them from 30 October 2018 after a three-year transition. Hokkaido became a wine GI on 28 June 2018, and Yamagata, Osaka and Nagano on 30 June 2021.

This atlas has opened official terroir descriptions only for Yamanashi, so it gives no national soil or climate summary. The National Tax Agency's Yamanashi specification notes that Japanese grape regions receive more rain than European ones, including during the growing season, and describes growers' responses, such as umbrellas placed over bunches on hedge-trained vines and training fruit high to avoid rain splash. In Yamanashi itself, mountains shelter an inland basin from the sea, the rainy season and typhoons. The other wine GIs, Hokkaido, Yamagata, Nagano and Osaka, each cover a whole prefecture; their specifications were not opened.

The National Tax Agency says the labelling rules were introduced to raise international recognition of Japan wine and to let consumers tell it apart from wine made in Japan from imported concentrate or imported wine. For Yamanashi, its specification describes Koshu wines as aromatic and gentle, with citrus notes and crisp acidity when dry, and Muscat Bailey A as red-purple, with a fragrance suggesting sweetness and mild tannin. Yamanashi Prefecture describes Koshu as a pink grape whose thick skin suits humid summers, and says DNA analysis in 2013 showed European and wild Chinese grape ancestry.

Under the National Tax Agency's labelling standards, wine made in Japan from imported wine or concentrated juice must say so, and only Japan wine may name a place of grape harvest, a variety or a harvest year. A place of harvest needs at least 85% of the grapes from that area; a single variety, or two or three varieties named in descending order, need together at least 85%; and a harvest year needs at least 85% of grapes from that year. A brewery's location may also be named, but only in a form that does not suggest the grapes came from there.

A GI goes further, with a product specification and a control body. Yamanashi, for example, requires 100% Yamanashi grapes from listed varieties, minimum sugar levels, and storage and bottling in the prefecture.