Books: an impressive guide to Japanese Wine from Nick Rowan
Japanese Wine: History, Regions, Wineries
By Nick Rowan
Wine Fogg, 2025, website https://winefogg.com/
I’ve visited Japanese wine regions several times, and I think there’s an interesting wine scene here that’s worth exploring. With few exceptions, though, everything is on a small scale, and this extremely fragmented production base, coupled with strong local demand, makes finding Japanese wines on export markets quite a challenge.
For most non-Japanese, the extent of their knowledge of Japanese wine is limited to Koshu wines from the Yamanashi region, because there’s been some effort to promote these abroad. But while Koshu can be interesting, there’s a lot more to Japanese wine than this. I’ve tried to communicate this, writing up my trips on wineanorak.com, but now there is an amazing resource available in the English language: a seriously in-depth, scholarly book from Nick Rowan.
Nick has spent a lot of time in Japan, and for a while lived there. He knows his stuff, and he’s put together an incredibly useful and fully comprehensive book that acts as a travel guide to, for those who want to visit. There are details on some 700 wineries here (this gives an idea of the fragmentation of the industry) as well as a lot of background such as grape varieties, viticulture, history and even the Japanese language. The writing style is clear and engaging, and this represents a unique and invaluable resource. Few wine countries or regions have a reference work this clear, thorough and extensive.
It’s a hefty hardback of 434 pages, in black and white, but really well put together. I imagine the market for this book will not be huge, but this isn’t the point. Few traditional publishers would even look at a project like this, and Nick’s self-publishing work is of a higher standard than that of many of the established publishers. If you have any interest in Japanese wine and are thinking of a visit, this book is more-or-less compulsory.
The book can be bought here
