Kobe Wine Tunnel

Kobe Wine Tunnel - Photo Credit : Asahi Shinbun

There was an interesting article in the
Asahi Shinbun (Asahi Newspaper).
It’s obviously in Japanese so I’ve tried to translate the gist of it here.

It seems over 40 years ago Port Island in Kobe was being built and a huge tunnel was dug to move the sand and rock from the mountain down to the island.

This tunnel, which is 7km long and between 4-8m wide and 3-5m high, was first used in 1964 but was closed down in 2005.

This year, the converyor belt used to move the material through the tunnel was removed and as of 18th March, Kobe Winery are renting about 135m of the tunnel to store around 140,000 bottles of their wine.

Obviously tunnels, like cellars are ideal places to store wine due to their steady cool temperature, away from the Japanese summer humidity.