Ringed by the outer Chichibu mountains and dotted with serene rice fields, the town of Ogawa in Saitama Prefecture is hardly known as wine country. And yet winemaker Yuzo Fukushima found himself drawn to the area’s pristine water sources and long-standing organic farming traditions.
At Musashi Winery, Fukushima and his team employ a scrupulous policy in which no fertilizers, pesticides, chemicals or additives are used at any stage of the winemaking process — an unconventional, challenging approach given the difficult climate conditions faced by many Japanese winemakers.
Another initiative setting Musashi Winery apart from its peers is its maturation of wine in domestic barrels instead of the traditional French or American oak. Its signature red wine, for example, made from an indigenous hybrid grape variety known as shōkōshi, is aged in barrels crafted from trees native to Japan, including sugi (cedar), hinoki (Japanese cypress) and mizunara (Japanese oak). In Japan, such barrels are typically used to age whisky, not wine.
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