Taste Testing Nagano's Domaine Nakajima Cabernet Franc & Chenin-Sauvignon Blanc: Japan's Cult Favourite With Fine-Wine & Natural-Wine Lovers Alike

In the summer of 2020, Domaine Nakajima held a wine sale at its estate. Just 9 bottles of Cabernet Franc, 10 bottles of Merlot, 5 Chenin Blancs. Drinkers scrambled to travel roughly two hours from Tokyo, via the Shinkansen, then a local train, then a climb to the winery estate that sits 800 metres above sea level – all for those 24 estate-sold bottles that sold out within the weekend.

That a winery could treat 24 bottles as a release tells you something about the scarcity of these wines. Natural wine shops such as the Netherlands-based Gubi Gubi or Singapore's Temple Cellars still strictly ration Nakajima’s flagship Cabernet Franc to one bottle per customer. Wine production has modestly scaled up over the years. These days, just about a thousand-odd bottles of the flagship Cabernet Franc is divided among domestic Japanese retailers, restaurants, bars, and importers several overseas markets.

Scarcity on its own does not explain how this micro-estate that is, for the most part, a one-man show by grower-winemaker Yutaka Nakajima, became so highly sought-after across the natural wine circuits of Europe and Asia, and has earned the praise of English fine wine writers.

Much of it might have to do with the amount of care Nakajima puts into presenting his wine to the world. When meticulous farming yielded incredibly small batches of wine, Nakajima wanted the preciously few bottles to reach people who would drink them with equal consideration.

When commercial sales began in 2015, he wouldn’t sell bottles over the internet – prioritising in-person sales or bars that were looking for a small case of 6 or 12 wines. Nakajima is also incredibly earnest about sharing his winemaking journey with drinkers and the wine trade the difficult details that other producers prefer to keep to themselves. For the past decade, he painstakingly documented his journey in weekly to monthly blog updates, in long technical winemaking essays and vintage reports that record weather patterns, vineyard health and diseases, blend percentages, alcohol levels and diagnosis of his own mistakes.

For instance, he disclosed that the bottle fermentation of the 2024 Pétillant Blanc stalled at a fraction of the pressure he was aiming for. He documented his mistakes and sold the bottles with a sticker on them reading “No bubbles, sold cheap”.

Rather than courting the approval of critics, Nakajima also preferred to focus on toiling amongst his vines. Much of the early demand for Domaine Nakajima in Europe was assembled by highly respected experts who personally visited Nagano. Burgundy authority Jasper Morris MW was touring the prefecture when he tasted the 2014 Cabernet Franc and raved about its deliciousness and finesse. Technical expert Dr Jamie Goode later personally travelled to the estate and gave top scores to Nakajima’s 2016 Chenin Blanc & Sauvignon Blanc blend, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.

What stayed constant is Nakajima’s rejection of growth for its own sake or the expense of his wine’s quality. In an early piece, he declared “I want to grow the winery at the same speed as the vines grow”.

The audience nevertheless widened. His wines now reach over forty Japanese retailers running from Sapporo to Okinawa, restaurants, bars, and importers in the US, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Saint-Émilion dreams in Nagano

Nakajima would remind readers on his online winemaking journal that he received little conventional education in winemaking. Born in Hamura in western Tokyo, he graduated and worked as an electrical and IT systems engineer. At the same time though, he nurtured an interest in wine outside the office.

After being a series of cookery classes at Le Cordon Blue, he became fascinated by wine pairing and service, and received the Wine Expert qualification from the Japan Sommelier’s Association. Until this point, Nakajima remained an avid wine lover but had not entertained entering the wine industry.

That change happened on a clear Spring day in May when he was vacationing in Bordeaux and taking a stroll through the vineyard hills of Saint-Émilion. He saw how small family wineries would temporarily close at noon, and then sit down for a long home-made lunch with relatives and friends. “How nice it would be to spend a whole life in vineyards as pleasant as these,” Nakajima later wrote. “It was the ideal world that wine creates.”

Green merlot grapes on bunches (Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

This fateful trip to Saint-Émilion supplied him with an image of the daily life of a winemaker and the varieties of grapes that Nakajima would plant in his vineyards back home. Here in Saint-Émilion, the earlier-ripening Merlot commonly supplies supple fruit, while Cabernet Franc contributes freshness and firmer tannins.

While still working as an engineer, Nakajima began attending Tokyo’s Academy du Vin, and took winemaking classes under Junko Arai who made her winemaking fame in Loire Valley.

Paving way for Cabernet Franc in Tomi

While Nakajima’s mind was made, he still required a legal route into winemaking. Japanese law at the time required grape winemakers to operate at a certain minimum scale. The law expected an annual production of at least 6,000 litres, or about 8,000 standard bottles.

He faced a circular problem. He had hoped to begin at 3,000 bottles a year - a plausible output a family-run micro-estate farming largely by hand - and gradually expand his scale to meet the required legal threshold. However, to qualify for the licence and begin operations in the first place, he needed to show enough projected production at the required threshold.

In 2008, while still Nakajima was still attending winemaking classes, the Japanese government announced that Tomi city in Nagano would was designated a wine special zone. This meant that a smaller facility envisioned by Nakajima with roughly 3,000 bottles a year could be licensed there. Nakajima resigned and moved to Tomi in spring 2009.

Tomi in Nagano Prefecture features a dry, continental-like mountain climate with low annual rainfall, long sunshine hours, and extreme daily temperature swings. These conditions have been praised by wine experts to be ideal for European wine grapes. 

Nakajima still needed to find a way to acquire land, fruit, a suitable winery building and the finance to build it. He spent a year apprenticing under local growers in Tomi. With a small grant for new winemakers, Nakajima leased a disused Kyoho vineyard and bought the adjoining plot as the future site of his winery.

He now had a vineyard. Yet it wouldn’t make the wine he dreamed of in Saint-Émilion. Japan’s commercial grape wine industry dates back to the 1870s but was built around table grape varieties grown mainly to be eaten – not wine grapes that are much smaller, with more skin that could supply colour, tannins and aroma. The Kyoho vineyard was a vestige of Japan’s old wine industry and had to be completely replanted.

Cabernet Franc bunch at harvest (Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

In spring 2010, Nakajima removed the old vines and began planting Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc in vertical rows. He also did a Gamay trial which he later abandoned.

While the young vines matured and took root, Nakajima took an interest in low-intervention winemaking and used three autumn harvests to visit other cellars that focus on spontaneous fermentation. He joined Junko Arai at her natural wine-focused winery in Loire called Domaine des Bois Lucas, then Weingut Bernhard Huber in Baden which specialises in Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir), and finally Coco Farm Winery in Tochigi which farms organically. Nakajima recounted hard physical work, little short, very kind hosts and long conversations. The engineer watched three complete harvests before began to make more permanent choices in his own cellar.

 

Chenin Blanc on the vine at harvest (Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

 

When Domaine Nakajima was officially licensed in 2014, it became the fourth winery established in Tomi. The first labels were illustrated by his elder sister.

Low-intervention wines begin with the site

“Wine production starts with the soil of the field,” argued Nakajima. He points to the choice of land and vineyard as the foundation upon which other important winemaking decisions are made.

The estate owns two small vineyards with a combined holding of roughly 3 hectares, which places the winery at the scale of a small farm.

(Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

The 1.5-hectare home vineyard lies in the Kanō district, on a steep, south-facing clay slope at around 780 metres above sea level with rows are at two by one metre dimensions. As mentioned, the former Kyoho field was meticulously replanted. Nakajima has compared this cool site with the Loire, whose wines and varieties he loves – Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc. This cool Japanese site allows both grapes to ripen slowly as they would in Loire.

Among Japanese wine districts, this site has the strength of being unusually dry, sunny and cool, which adds water stress (a good thing) and reduces vineyard disease pressure. European varieties often struggle in Japan’s generally humid growing season, with fungal disease pressure and heavy rain when flowers need to set fruit or ripe berries need to remain intact. Here, the site’s southern aspect catches more sunlight and its steepness helps with soil drainage and helps more wind pass through the canopy, swiftly drying the leaves and fruit. Fertiliser washes down the incline, and the same runoff makes the strong clay dry hard in summer. These conditions are exacting on the vines and add water stress, a precondition to creating tiny, more aromatic fruit. The unusually dry, well-ventilated piece is also beneficial for a low-interventionist grower who hopes to limit spraying, and corrective measures in the cellar.

Finally, the clear days bring a large swing between daytime and night-time temperatures, helping fruit ripen quicker in the day and helping grapes retain acidic freshness at night. The combination is especially useful for a producer seeking ripe fruit without a broad, high-alcohol style.

The second vineyard in Mido district was planted in 2020, first with Chardonnay vines. It sits higher, at about 850 metres, on a gentler south-west-facing slope exposed to steady wind. The new plantings supplied their first Chardonnay fruit in 2023 and their first Pinot Noir, Savagnin and Pinot Gris and Gewürztraminer wines in 2024.

The Mido vineyard is safer from drought as it sits on a very gentle slope, which does not shed water as quickly. But too much water would be a problem. Therefore, Nakajima stepped in to cut an open drainage ditch between every row. He estimates the site receives around 900 millimetres of rain but that runoff reduces the water available to the vines to an effective 700 to 800. Its altitude and wind also promise a long, cool season.

Sensible farming by hand

An intricate diagram drawn up by Yutaka Nakajima to represent his winemaking methodology (English translation added by us).

Nakajima’s low-interventionist winemaking approach begins with doing some vineyard work in advance, so that fewer corrections are required come time of harvest and in the cellar.

Light farming work is done during off-harvest seasons. No machine heavier than a person is permitted to enter the vineyard. Nakajima objects to the pressure of tractors, ride-on mowers and speed sprayers. Such heavy machinery deal damage when they compress the soil, reducing the pore space that carries air and water, causing roots to meet greater resistance, while drainage and infiltration slow. Nakajima uses a hand-held mower, and does as little mowing, tying down and leaf removal as the season permits, and as few agrochemicals as he thinks the crop can survive.

(Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

For 15 seasons, from 2010 through 2024, the soil itself was not ploughed. No-till farming leaves the soil largely undisturbed, retaining plant cover and the water channels made by roots and the natural microbiome teeming in the soil. Nakajima adopted it after reading natural-farming literature and the books of Akinori Kimura, the Aomori apple grower known for farming without agricultural chemicals or fertiliser.

Pest control is just as manual. He removes bagworms, thrips and beetles by hand, one at a time. The humidity in Japan raises the risk of fungal mildew attacks considerably, and that cannot be feasibly picked off by hand. So, from the five-leaf stage Nakajima may personally apply Bordeaux mixture (a preventive spray invented in Bordeaux in the 1800s of copper sulphate and hydrate lime) about every two and a half weeks with a handheld hose.

Noble rot taking hold on the Chenin Blanc grapes (Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

There are sensible limits to Nakajima’s low-interventionist farming policy. In 2024, a certain tiny insect showed up that could not be removed by hand. Nakajima had to resort to an insecticide and candidly published the exception on his online journal. “But I do not want to use insecticide every year,” he admitted.

In 2025, Nakajima had to briefly abandon his no-till policy. Infestation by tiny pests called yellow tea thrips and grape leaf skeletoniser, and fungal ripe rot had gotten worse in certain blocks. He began tilling only his most-affected plots and monitoring the results, noting in his online journal that there were still advantages in favour of leaving soil untilled.

Knowing each variety like the back of his hand

Due to the sheer amount of work Nakajima does himself in the vineyards, he has an unusually granular knowledge of each vine and grape variety that few other winemakers possess.

Almost as if Nakajima is documenting his own growth as a winemaker, he recorded his observations and learnings that Merlot shoots tend to weaken and stop earlier, while the berries ripen quickly on vine, sugar rising sooner and the fruit character often becomes more forward. Cabernet Franc on the other hand is slower ripening and keeps growing for another two or three weeks, only changing colour by the end of that period. He reasons that its continuing shoot and root activity supports greater mineral uptake, giving more depth and thickness.

While these varieties are bottled into separate wines, he understands their partnership in Bordelais terms: early ripening, supple Merlot against later ripening, more structured Cabernet Franc.

Both Chenin Blanc and Merlot share another problem on the home slope. Their flowering period overlaps with the cool rainy season, and strong wind can keep the flowers from becoming berries. Growers call this coulure: when flowers fail to set fruit, leaving loose bunches and a smaller crop. Nakajima accepts the loss because the remaining fruit can become more concentrated, but the irregular yield makes a very small business still harder to plan.

Doing as little as possible in the cellar

After site setting and harvest comes cellar work, which Nakajima describes with a chef’s metaphors. Great high-quality ingredients require only simple preparation. For grapes, that preparation means removing rotten fruit from the vines, picking at sufficient acidity levels, and minimising oxidation of the juice to retain freshness. If those steps are done well, Nakajima believes fermentation can be left largely to the fruit and the cellar.

The bunches are sorted in a cool room. For red wines, bunches are pushed by hand through a perforated wooden board and destemmed (the whites are not destemmed and fermented whole-bunch). Instead of using a regular grape crusher, the trained engineer built a machine made with hardware store parts, adjusted to the gentlest setting that delicately puts one single crack in each berry. The berries then fall, uncrushed, into an open resin tank filled with carbon dioxide to displace oxygen. Fermentation naturally begins on its own after several days.

(Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

As wine fermentation proceeds, the solid fruit matter (skins, seeds) would rise and form what winemakers call a layer called the “cap”. For red wines, to encourage extraction of tannin and flavour from the skins, Nakajima initially does pump-overs in the morning and evening, before switching to punch-downs (pushing that cap beneath the liquid) twice a day. White wines simply undergo primary fermentation and do not have to be pumped-over.

(Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

Finally, when the liquid is ready to become wine, Nakajima presses the wine on the vertical basket press (a gentler, traditional press) and before moving the wine to used barrels that don’t add new oak flavour.

Ageing usually happens from 10 to 12 months in 225-litre used French oak. A used barrel allows slow oxygen exchange without giving the pronounced oak spices of a new barrel. As wine evaporates, Nakajima tops each barrel about every two weeks to reduce oxidation aerobic microbial growth. He tastes at the same time to monitor it.

Nakajima does not fine or filter the wine. Neither does he chaptalise (adding sugar early, as is often done in Burgundy or Germany), acidify or stir the lees. Most unusually, he does not rack the wine during barrel ageing.

He has elaborated on the goal behind this minimalist approach. Natural fermentation uses wild yeast, which broadens microbial complexity. Not racking the wine might result in a cloudier wine but increases lees contact and boosts savoury depth. Filtration or fining will “shave off flavour and aroma”.

Nakajima could not run away from having to use a little sulphur, even though adding it comes at a cost to flavour. His journal entries observed how sensitive the wine is to raising or lowering sulphur through the vintages. He experimented with various levels, from 15 ppm in 2016 to 25 ppm in 2023 and up to 30 to 40 ppm in the 2024 vintage. He observed that too little sulphur would cause unwanted oxidative notes to appear in the wine. Too much sulphur would protect the wine against oxidation, but result in less expressive and muted aromas – at least in the wine’s early life.

(Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

The risk of spoilage is in part caused by rising temperatures. The underground cellar built by Nakajima once held at near 16°C through summer with a domestic air conditioner that he calls Mr Polar Bear. Recent summers have pushed it towards 20°C. Nakajima resorted to installing a 200-volt electrical supply and commercial cooling, which he calls “a large investment for a small winery, but also a necessary investment if I am to go on making wine”.

The reds, whites and pet-nats of Domaine Nakajima

Domaine Nakajima’s identity has been best associated with its flagship red Cabernet Franc, and its white blend of Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc.

The red Cabernet Franc has held the central place from the beginning. Nakajima chose this grape variety for a cool site because it could ripen slowly while retaining acidity, with less greenness and deeper colour. Fruit comes first from the Kanō home slope and, since 2023, also from Mido. This was the bottle that drew Jasper Morris MW’s exclamation and led Jamie Goode to take a special trip to his estate.

Jasper Morris MW has expressed a very favourable view of the quality of Nagano's wines and its cool-climate acidity. He also shared high praise for Nakajima's Cabernet Franc. 

The Merlot sits beside it as a physiological counterweight. Nakajima described it to push sweeter, with more obvious fruit. Cabernet Franc on the other hand keeps growing and thus supplies more depth and length.

The estate’s flagship white blend of Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc was the product of a happy accident. The estate originally planned a single-variety Chenin Blanc. When the 2015 vintage was released to subscribers of his wine, Nakajima published a letter apologising that what was expected to be a Chenin Blanc wine actually contained some Sauvignon Blanc. By the 2016 vintage, what was an inadvertent mixing became an established Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc blend with a disclosed 77-to-23 ratio.

(Source: Yutaka Nakajima)

While the two varieties were initially vinified separately and blended before barrel, by 2023, Nakajima confidently pressed them together and fermented as one wine. The Chenin Blanc supplies the weight, body, richer orchard and stone fruits and some savoury character, while the addition of Sauvignon Blanc was found to create a more balanced wine thanks to its acidity and herbal lift.

While the Cabernet Franc, and Chenin-Sauvignon Blanc blend are the critical high point of Domaine Nakajima, since inception it has been producing a range of celebrated Kyoho pét-nat (Pétillant Nature). This is the more approachable, accessible (read affordable), and more quaffable side of the Nakajima house.

Remember our earlier discussion about clearing the vineyards of Kyoho vines? In the early years, Nakajima used some of these Kyoho grapes to produce a cheerful sparkling bubbly that could be produced in much larger volumes. This inexpensive-to-produce but commercially popular fizz subsidised operations of the first decade of the business.

Almost all the fruit is shade-dried before pressing, removing water and concentrating it. The wine also receives no sulphur. Nakajima describes the style as carrying Tomi's cool acidity, a soft wild-yeast umami and a roundness from malolactic fermentation. He recommends drinking it with the lees stirred up, "with plenty of lees at around 16°C." Today, Nakajima sources from neighbouring table-grape farmers to continue the cuvée.

Yutaka Nakajima, photographed with his mother in his winery (Source: Temple Cellars)

Yutaka Nakajima has a boyish complexion that belies his age. Next year, he would turn 50. In the recently published vintage report, he reflected candidly on how the relentless physical work the estate demands was beginning to take its toll on him. He farms with minimal equipment, mows the steep slope by hand, and picks pests off the vines one at a time.

Recent summers have made such labour harder still, with heat arriving earlier and lingering longer. He shared that he has begun thinking seriously about making the punishing seasons a little kinder on his health, so that he can continue doing this work for years to come.

It is difficult not to admire how much one person has achieved by putting his mind and his own hands to a dream. From an idea born from a stroll through Saint-Émilion’s vineyards one fateful spring day, to acquiring and replanting an old Kyoho field, Nakajima almost singlehandedly built one of Japan’s most sought-after micro-estates, never once at the expense of how the wine is grown or made. That care and love is what reaches our glasses.

We recently had the opportunity to have a taste of the flagship red and white of Domaine Nakajima. These amazing wines are available in Singapore from Artisan Cellars – the official importer of Domaine Nakajima’s wines.

Wine Review: Domaine Nakajima Cabernet Franc 

Vintage 2024, 100% Cabernet Franc, aged 10-12 months in used 225-litre barrels, 10% ABV

Tasting Notes

Appearance: Deep Ruby

Aroma: It opens really fresh and rather vegetal, with also an immediate crunchy greenness and red fruited tartness. A full spread of rhubarb, green tomatoes, green bell peppers and green olives, alongside wild strawberries and dark cherries. There’s a stemmy quality to it, with also a delicate floral perfumed of crushed rose petals, and then some suppleness of vanilla cream backing it. With time, it gets more chewy, with blackcurrant pastilles and black licorice, underscored by wet stones. Also a prominent rusticity to it like fresh cream or stracciatella.

Taste: Medium bodied here, plush, rich, and abound with a liveliness that’s very energetic. Also great concentration and tension, creamy still, with then all those tart fruits and vegetal qualities that carry over, with rhubarb, wild strawberries, hawthorn, dark cherries, green olives and also a savouriness of olive tapenade. Quite the bit of salinity to go with the bright and fresh, really perky acidity and tartness. Much of the body is dominated with this high acid greenness of tomato juice, green tomatoes and tomato leaf, with then more savoury umaminess of marmite and a light rusticity of animal hide. It’s again underscored and given a lift from the wet stone minerality that’s so linear and laser like, running through it below.

Finish: Immense and all encompassing swaths of tomatoes, tomato juice, leaf, puree - every form and every bit of the tomato is in there. It’s got that savoury, umami, leafiness that goes with the tart strawberries and cherries. It’s creamy and rich, incredibly umami, with super high acidity. It does get more mineral with those wet stones into the finish, rich, plush, still carrying with no loss of energy all that umaminess and acidity that only intensifies here. Tannins are firm yet polished, with a persistent lingering of tomato leaf and juice.

My Thoughts

This was incredibly high acid, super umami and vegetal and tart, filled to the brim with tomatoes, olives and cherries, that it almost feels like an uber fresh garden salad. Whilst it brings with it this immense energy and liveliness, is really clean and linear, super fresh of course, it can also be rather divisive in how streaky and slicing that acidity is. It’s almost laser like and does not let up all the way through! That said, it does feel rather evocative and almost of the pastoral countryside, with all that crunchy leafiness, the wet stones and mineral spring waters, even that hit of fresh stracciatella, it’s like being out in the alps on a verdant, spring morning. It’s certainly polished and shows signs of refinement and clarity, although it would be interesting to see if that acidity tampers down with some age.

Wine Review: Domaine Nakajima Chenin Blanc & Sauvignon Blanc

Vintage 2023, 74.5% Chenin Blanc, 25.5% Sauvignon Blanc, aged for 10 months in used 225-litre barrels, 12% ABV

Tasting Notes

Appearance: Canary yellow.

Aroma: So generously tropical and pithy this is reminiscent of a bright and sweet IPA! Opens with ripe tropical fruits as mango gummies, passionfruit and pink guava over a background of bright citrus - grapefruit, clementines and pithiness of pomelo peel and lemon peel. A core of honey holding this together. At all times there’s a top note of fresh herbs. As it sits, a very minor note of roasted macadamia begins to show.

Taste: Ripe, tropical, very substantial without heaviness. It has a rounded honeyed palate with a supple medium-plus body with light waxiness. A fleshy and juicy tropical-citrusy cluster with well-balanced acidity at al times – passionfruit, mango, grapefruits, orange peels. A backbone of citrusy acidity balancing the ripe sweetness throughout. Towards the back, a gentle toastiness and light leesy savouriness begins to show. A touch of dairy cream and toasted nuts.

Finish: Clean, fresh and citrusy, with a medium length. Continues with drying pith bitterness of lemon peels and orange peels, while showing a touch of toasted nut savouriness and light salinity. A touch of light white pepper.

My Thoughts

A satisfyingly distinctive white with tons of juicy character and finesse. It combines the best of generously lush, fruity and fleshy character of warm climate sauvignon blanc, with fresh and balanced cool climate sensibilities so that it never gets too rich or alcoholic.

It’s so vivid in its tropical character-pithy character that on the nose it’s distinctively reminiscent of a West Coast IPA. On the palate, it also appears to combine the breadth and substantial texture of a Chenin Blanc, with the tropical fruits, citrus and herbs of a Sauvignon Blanc. It drinks fantastic even when poured slightly cooler than white wines are served, while more tropical character and light creaminess slowly unfold as it approaches room temperature.

@CharsiuCharlie