Soryu Winery Katsunuma
TweetJust a little bit up the road past the Domaine Chateraise and the large Mercian Winery, up a small hill and situated on the corner of a small crossroads is the Soryu Winery.
Soryu Winery
A small winery that’s been here since 1899 according to the big sign on the front of the shop.
The shop is attached to the winery although we weren’t able to look around those buildings, but you can go down some stairs and look at part of their cellars if you wish.
Soryu Wines
What I liked about this winery is the “help yourself” tasting method. They have a small fridge full of their wines and you can take them out and try them as you please.
They make some great wines here including a “Freezing Wine” as they called it. This is basically their version of an ice wine (grapes that are picked off the vines while frozen, thus making a more concentrated and sweet wine as the water in the grapes is ice so the sugar is more concentrated). It’s too hot in Katsunuma to make genuine ice wine, so they must “fake” it, with refrigeration techniques, etc.
It was my first taste of a “Freezing/Ice” wine and I was very impressed. So much so, I bought a bottle.
Ice wines are generally much more expensive than normal wines due to the risks involved (leaving the grapes on the vines into the winter can result in them going bad, and become unusable) and the smaller harvests. This one, at about ￥4000 ($40) for a small bottle was worth it.
They also sold “one cup” wines in small, sealed plastic cups. First time I’ve seen wine sold like that.
Take Out Wine
We bought a few bottles from here including a plastic cup wine and they all scored pretty well (very well in fact) :
Red Wines:
Sory Premium Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 – 88points
Chateau Soryu 2003 – 91 points
Soryu Premium Kai Noir 2006 – 85 points
White Wines :
Soryu Premium White – 88 points
Soryu Wine Katsunuma Winery Club 2008 – 91 points
Soryu Freezing Wine – 95 points
Soryu Wine Koshu – 88 points
Related posts on MoIppai
Tags: Chateau Soryu, Japanese Wine, Japanese Wineries, Katsunuma, Soryu Winery, Yamanashi Prefecture
Japan, Wineries | by MoIppai
Vote:
Japan, Wineries | by MoIppai
Vote:
[...] Mercian, Grace to much smaller and less well known wineries, for example Domaine Chateraise, Chateau Soryu, L’Orient and [...]
Pingback by Katsunuma wineries in Japan | MoIppai Wine, Beer, Sake, Whiskey Blog — February 21, 2010 @ 2:35 pm
[...] the higher quality wines.Mercian Winery The Mercian Katsunuma Winery is just up the road from the Soryu, Domaine Chateraise and Chanmoris wineries and we visited twice, we were too late for the tour on [...]
Pingback by Chateau Mercian Katsunuma Winery — March 9, 2010 @ 8:28 pm