Fattoria Al Fiore is a small winery located at the base of the Zao Federation mountain range in Kawasaki Town in the Miyagi Prefecture - a very calm, quiet, cozy town full of fields, mountains, lakes, small streets with busy shops and the warmest people. Hirotaka and Reina Meguro established the winery in 2015 inside a former school gymnasium. What was once home to the sound of bouncing basketballs is now home to amphora filled with Koshu, Delaware, Muscat A Baily and more indigenous varieties.

 

“Al Fiore” means ‘single flower’ in Italian and is named after Hirotaka’s former highly acclaimed Italian restaurant in Sendai City. Reina and her husband Hirotaka are supported by a small team who help them produce around 15,000 bottles yearly. Each label is dyed using persimmon fruit and numbered by hand.

 

Reina and Hirotaka source most of their fruit from neighboring regions like Nanyo City, Yamagata Prefecture, Takahata Town, and Yamanashi—home of the Koshu grape—just south of Tokyo. Since 2014 they have been cultivating 1.5 hectares of grapes in the fields of Adachi, Kawasaki Town with the hopes of producing wine purely from their own efforts.

 

Their wines are made up of both vitis vinifera and vitis labrusca. In the hands of Reina and Hirotaka these hybrid varieties like Delaware, Steuben, and Niagara create truly beautiful and unique wines. They are extremely delicate, matching perfectly with the flavors of Japanese cuisine.

 

They make their wines as naturally as possible and consult with all their growers on sustainable farming practices to create a “living soil” with the belief that coexisting with various plants and creatures rather than monoculture will create a diverse environment. With respect to the hard work of their grape growers, there are no additives used, no fining or filtration in order to create a wine that is a true reflection of where it is from.