Kochi

井上ワイナリーのいち醸造所

高知県香南市

PROFILE

Official Website

OFFICIAL WEBSITEinoue-winery.co.jp

Legal name: 井上石灰工業株式会社
Location: 〒781-5233 高知県香南市野市町大谷1424番地31
Representative: 井上孝志
Phone: 0887-50-6694
Email: tosa@inoue-winery.co.jp

ABOUT

A Kochi winery beneath beautiful sea and sky.

Aim high, dream big!

Winemaking that began in adversity.

FEATURE STORY

About Inoue Winery

When we asked ourselves how we could make use of our strengths to create something new, our experience providing technical support for grape cultivation overseas eventually led us to the idea of making wine in our home prefecture of Kochi. Three factors gave us the confidence to pursue the project.

1. The site lies at the foot of a limestone quarry, leading us to believe that its geology might resemble that of Burgundy, France, a world-famous wine region.

2. Our parent company’s agricultural product “IC Bordeaux,” highly effective against grape downy mildew and other diseases, has a strong share of the Japanese market.

3. We discovered that red wine pairs remarkably well with Kochi’s soul food, katsuo no tataki—seared bonito.

The Great Challenge of Climate

The greatest obstacle, however, was Kochi’s climate. Agriculture in Kochi benefits from abundant sunshine and rain, while grape growing is generally considered best with a day-night temperature difference of around 10°C and less than 1,000 mm of rainfall during the growing season. Comparing annual precipitation in Yamanashi, the birthplace of Japanese wine, with Kochi, Kochi receives roughly three times as much rain.

With high temperatures, heavy rainfall and frequent typhoons, some said there could hardly be a more difficult place in Japan to grow wine grapes. The more we heard doubts such as, “Growing grapes in Kochi—let alone making wine?”, the more our independent Kochi spirit was fired up, and our challenge to make local Kochi wine began.

Turning the Impossible into Possible

The major challenges of growing grapes in Kochi’s hot, rainy climate were typhoons and heavy rainfall. From grape varieties developed by the Shimura Grape Research Institute, a viticulture and winery consultancy, we selected varieties that could be harvested in Kochi before typhoon season. This brought us closer to solving the problem by allowing us to cultivate grapes suited to Kochi’s climate.

Even rain-tolerant varieties become more susceptible to disease when rainfall is heavy. We therefore adopted our parent company’s principal product, the naturally derived “IC Bordeaux,” which can be used under JAS organic farming standards, together with the “Grape Guard” system that protects vines from Kochi’s rain. By shielding the grapes from their greatest enemy—excess rain—we opened a path toward producing wine from Kochi grapes, once considered nearly impossible.