Kumamoto Wine Farm / Kumamoto Winery

One of Japan's top producers of Chardonnay wine.

Foundation ：Kumamoto Wine Farm – Kumamoto Winery 1999 / Kikuka Winery 2018

Location：Kumamoto Winery – 168-17 Mitsuzuka, Izumi-cho, Kita-ku, Kumamoto city, Kumamoto Kikuka Winery – 526 Sagara, Kikuka-cho, Yamaga city, Kumamoto

Owner：Kenichi Kohyama

Capital：50 million yen

Number of employees：13

Business：Grape cultivation, Wine-making,Sales of wine

DOMAINE

Kumamoto Wine Farm owns two wineries in Kumamoto Prefecture. One is Kumamoto Winery, founded in 1999, and the other is Kikuka Winery, founded in 2018. Kumamoto Wine Farm is partnered with about 30 grape farmers (total 9ha) to make wine. The vineyards are located in a basin area with a good environment for grape-growing: well-ventilated, with over 2,000 hours of sunlight / year and a good drainage due to the ground surface which contains a lot of mountain sand.

The soil is a well-balanced mixture with fields characterized by brown lowland soil (fine drainage) and black soil derived from volcanic ash (water-retentive). Although the location is a high rainfall area, they have rain-cut facilities (automatic openable greenhouse) to protect grapes from diseases and have underdrains to maintain a good drainage environment. The grapes are harvested by hand from late August to mid-September, and the integrant from the compounds of the grapes are controlled by using a mechanical temperature control device . At the Kikuka Winery’s owned vineyard (1.5ha), they cultivate Chardonnay, and other grapes such as Gewurztraminer / Viognier / Cabernet Franc / Merlot / Gamay /Pinot Noir, which had not been cultivated widely in the Kyushu area.

While their partner farmers cultivate their grapes using the VSP system, they adopted the pergola system for their own vineyard. Kikuka Winery’s stainless steel fermentation tanks and pressing machines are a compact size because they make wine in small batches for each type of grape.

HISTORY

“Kumamoto winery”, the first winery in Kumamoto, was founded in 1999. While inspecting various areas in Kumamoto, they discovered bright red salvia flowers blooming in Kikuka.

Salvia is a type of flower that grows in the tropics to subtropics with large temperature differences between day and night. After seeing salvia blooming, they were assured that the Kikuka area had a great possibility of becoming a fine vineyard. In the Kikuka area, wine grapes were not cultivated, so they contacted 3 farmers to start cultivating Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. In the fourth year, they finally became able to harvest Chardonnay, and they released “Kikuka Night Harvest Chardonnay 2003”.

They succeeded to harvest grapes at night when the temperatures are lower (it was the first attempt in Japan at that time). “Kikuka Winery” was newly established in Kikuka in 2018 since it took an hour to move grapes from the farms to the Kumamoto Winery. That was also when they finally succeeded in developing their own vineyard. In 2022, they won the highest category award at a domestic wine competition and started to show glimpses of its terroir. Currently, they are partnered with 31 farmers and are always striving to improve their manufacturing technique and the quality of their wine, as well as also trying to cultivate other types of grapes in their own vineyard.

Awards Chardonnay du Monde

2020 – Kikuka Chardonnay Barrel Aged

2017 Silver 2022 – Kikuka Chardonnay Silver

2023 - Kikuka Chardonnay Barrel Aged

2020 Gold - Kikuka Chardonnay Silver Sakura Awards

2021 – Delaware Silver 2022 - Niagara Gold - Campbell Early Silver Japan Wine Competition

2022 – Kikuka Chardonnay Barrel Aged 2019 Category Gold