The Morita family had been brewing sake, miso, and soy sauce in Kosugaya Village, Chita District, Owari Province (present-day Kosugaya, Tokoname City, Aichi Prefecture) since the mid-Edo period. The 11th-generation head of the family, Kyūzaemon, was searching for a new business in line with the Meiji government's policies of national development and industrial promotion. In 1880, he turned his attention to grapes then being cultivated in Koshu (Yamanashi Prefecture) and resolved to make wine as a contribution to the country. In 1881, he received permission to use 520 hectares of government-owned forest in Kosugaya Village, opened a vineyard of roughly 50 hectares, and began planting wine grapes.
The Morita vineyard steadily developed under cultivation guidance from government specialists in wine grapes. A French Ministry of Agriculture official visiting Japan at the time reportedly described it as the vineyard that impressed him most in the country. According to an 1886 report by Japan's Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, Aichi Prefecture had come to account for roughly half of the nation's grape cultivation.
Kyūzaemon's dream of making wine like that of France, then one of the world's leading wine-producing countries, was moving steadily toward realization.
In 1885, a technician was invited from Koshu to advise on construction of the winery. The first harvestable grapes were gathered, and preparations were made for the autumn crush. Then an unforeseen disaster struck. Phylloxera, which was ravaging vineyards around the world at the time, reached the Morita vineyard and quickly devastated it. Kyūzaemon's dream of making wine on a French level was, regrettably, left unfulfilled.
Later, the second son of the 14th-generation Kyūzaemon took over Morita Co., Ltd. and decided to revive the winemaking ambition that the 11th head had been unable to realize. In 1973, he established a winery in Katsunuma, Koshu—the heartland of Japanese grape growing and winemaking—and named its wines Chanmoris.
The business continued to grow, and when the original facility became too small, the present winery was completed at the request of Katsunuma Town as the first factory in the area's Wine Valley development.
