At Japan’s first winery, the country’s oldest grape lives on | Hacker News Reader

At Japan’s first winery, the country’s oldest grape lives on

japantimes.co.jp

109 pointskaraokeyoga88 comments

> Carefully, the chief viticulture engineer of Iwanohara Vineyard, Japan’s oldest operating winery, inspects each of the 5,500 grape vines that make up Iwanohara’s six hectares in Kitagata, Niigata Prefecture.

> So far, Wada has found three bugs after two hours of work. The midday sun beats down, and beads of sweat pool on his neck. Iwanohara focuses on using as few pesticides as possible, an approach that means Wada is using a handmade tool to dig out any insects he finds.

Watching Drops of god on Apple TV I thought the way those wine nuts were portrayed was an exaggeration. Apparently, it wasn’t.

I recommend the documentary Sour Grapes

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5728684/

Drops of God is fun and educational, as is Bartender (https://mangakakalot.com/read-in2uo158504890455). I also enjoyed Oishinbo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oishinbo), though admittedly the non-food part of the plot gets a bit stale/one-uppey.

If you like Oishinbo, try Souta no Houcho (Sota's Knife). Bambino! and Bambino! Secondo are also decent.

Japan's MO seems to be extreme attention to detail on labor intensive high end luxury products. This translated into good transfer learning towards industrialization after WW2 but now has stagnated its potential by focusing on optimizing local maxima. It's aims fail to see the forest for the trees.

They're probably zening out on these new forms of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko-ry%C5%AB in the tech space.

Perhaps they aren't always trying to maximize growth.

I think local focus is the secret sauce to the diversity of outputs and ability to sustain so many different niche interests.

I agree with you and I think it's a cultural difference which is really hard for Americans to grasp because we're ultra-competitive, in your face, maximize, automate, dominate.

Maybe we win in some sense but we don't enjoy the forest in the same way.

I’m curious if handcrafting artisans like this exist in North America/Europe at anywhere near the same scale (and we only see stories from Japan as we view it as something their culture does) or whether this is a uniquely Japanese thing to do.

Perhaps we just value it less here in North America.

All stories of extremely small batch but precisely crafted products seem to come out of Japan.

> Perhaps we just value it less here in North America.

The reason we have less stuff like this in the USA is due to geography. We are a mostly flat country, rather than being mountainous or separated onto different small islands. Because of this, products produced via economies of scale can outcompete higher-quality artisanal products.

Except, shipping by boat has been more cost effective since the beginning of history. The furthest you can get from the ocean in Japan is like a full days walk.

> shipping by boat has been more cost effective since the beginning of history

I've read that before the Transcontinental Railroad, it was cheaper and faster to get to San Francisco from a port in China than from St. Louis.

Similarly, people who wanted to join the 1849 San Francisco gold rush, but were on the East Coast, took boats which sailed all the way around South America to reach SF the fastest.

Well, unless it involved going around the horn. Time costs something too?

> We are a mostly flat country

Eh? The US is the opposite of "mostly flat". And large swaths of the mostly flat part have low population density. The country is also very regional with considerable local diversity in what is produced and available locally.

The US produces a lot of very local artisanal products throughout the country that don't travel very far that are based on local tradition and history. That's been true everywhere I've lived in the US.

> The US is the opposite of "mostly flat". And large swaths of the mostly flat part have low population density.

Eh? Most of the population lives in the Atlantic coastal, Gulf coastal, and Midwest plains. Only a minority of Americans live in places that could be considered "mostly mountainous", methinks.

Even Denver, the most populous city in (arguably) the most mountainous state, is actually a Great Plains city.

The big flat areas have low population density BECAUSE of all economy of scale farming. Look at California: You've got 4 metropolitan areas, 2 of which (the Bay Area and Los Angeles) are in coastal areas that have geographically convenient access to the big flat area with farms, one (San Diego) in a big flat desert, and one on the river in the big flat area (Sacramento). Chicago's surrounding areas are flat farmland. Portland and Seattle likewise have river access to their state's big flat areas. What's between the Rockies and Appalachia? Big flat farms.

There are many vinyards that have small batch varieties, they just don’t invite the commoners.

There was a story recently about Coppola. His property has something like ~70 soil type/grape combinations and he has more money than god, so he decided to buy fermenters for every combination and see what happens.

there are thousands of examples of this outside of Japan, there are small chateaux whose stock will never even see a market because it is promised to friends, family, a circle of trade customers, and some insiders, the venn diagram of which is probably not far off a wonky circle.

Perhaps we just value it less here in North America.

I can't speak for Canada or Mexico, but due to so many benefits being tied to full time employment in the US and a general lack of any kind of social safety net, you have to already be independently wealthy or willing to be a starving artist to do something like that - invest a lot of time into learning a craft that probably won't payoff for decades (if at all).

All stories of extremely small batch but precisely crafted products seem to come out of Japan.

In general, I do think the west fetishizes this aspect of Japan's culture and thus overreports it. That said, many people around the world still do this. I suggest not relying on stories so much to understand the world around you.

> due to so many benefits being tied to full time employment in the US and a general lack of any kind of social safety net, you have to already be independently wealthy or willing to be a starving artist to do something like that

Something that is kind of wild about the USA is that for as much as the culture seems to value entrepeneurship, the political and economic system is designed to stifle it and discourage people from starting businesses.

It's just dishonesty from politicians. You'll see legislation passed under the guise helping "family farms", but in reality, these subsidies help big ag and hurt the smaller operations: https://www.johnlocke.org/farming-subsidies-disproportionate...

I'm sure it's similar across sectors. Tech startups are what they are thanks to private venture capital.

Japanese culture seems to emphasize the experience of "doing" a lot more than the west. This attitude surely stems from Zen Buddhist ideas.

For example, in the west, there is a commonly shared fantasy that automating away work will lead to happiness, having the robots doing it all is Nirvana; However, e all know deep down inside we'd still need something to do, we'd have to create some purpose or some object for ourselves. I bet most people would be outside growing food and playing in the garden with their kids if they didn't have to work. Many people in Japan actually do this, there is a LOT of small scale farming in Japan, they do not really share the same farming practices we do in the west. Step out side Tokyo and this is immediately obvious, almost everyone is growing something. It's much more small scale and often has more human involvement. I think Japan is culturally more suited to accepting the fact that life can be toil and toil is good, it is what there is.

I'm definitely not trying to say Japan is better, or all Japanese people are like this, just there is cultural roots which make some of these practices more suited to life in Japan than it would in other cultures.

It also helps that Japan generally lacks the flat land that makes ultra mechanized farming impossible, and high food import tariffs.

That being said, I wouldn’t say they’re accepting of it; Japan’s rapid depopulation is overwhelmingly happening in the countryside, because it is all toil for less pay.

It doesn't really lack large swathes of flat land. Sure it might not look like Texas, but if you're telling me there isn't enough room to be running combine harvesters over large areas of land you're wrong.

Anyhow, the land influences culture, so my point still stands, if the reason for their attitude to farming practices is because there is mountains, it doesn't make much difference, people don't know any different and that's how they have operated for millennia.

Japan’s rapid depopulation is overwhelmingly happening in the countryside, because it is all toil for less pay.

Right, like as if working in Tokyo is no toil for more pay? Sorry but you don't sound very well informed to me. In general, Japanese don't get well at all, I view Japan as much more of a socialist system than people realize.

Japan's aging population problem has nothing to do with whether you live in the countryside and grow your own veggies or not, it has to do with demographics and go visit any major city and you will find a lot of elderly people there too. Of course a small village is going to be more effected than Tokyo with 30+ million people when the population is shrinking. Either way, people from Tokyo eat sushi rice from rural areas.

It’s not exactly ideal to run ultra wide harvesters on narrow terraced fields.

Until the pandemic, the statistics show net population increase in Tokyo, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Osaka and substantial declines in rural areas. The work’s not any easier, but you get paid more.

I’m not saying any of this is good, but let’s not get into weird exoticism and othering based on some idyllic vision of Japan.

So you know, I am from rural Japan, so I'm not coming at you with just an idyllic view and many farmers I know range from age 25-90. No one is doing it tough, or breaking their body here. Mostly it's a fairly relaxing lifestyle, especially in mid-summer while farmers are mostly just tending to crops.

Young people move to Tokyo because rural life can be boring if you're not into the outdoors. Watching rice grow isn't for everyone. However, you might be surprised to know that where I live there is actually a housing crisis because so many people are trying to find a house here after re-evaluating their life since the pandemic.

Also don't try and tell me everything is a rice terrace because it's not, there are plenty of crops being grown on large flat plains. That's just some kind of idealistic view you yourself have.

I do find this farming is just back breaking "toil" myth really interesting, it comes up a lot on HN, especially in the context of automation. Kind of the quintessential justification for everything. There is farming smart and there is farming stupid. Experienced farmers I know don't do a lot of work and are producing more food than they and their families consume.

My opinion, a lot of the farming horror stories come from uneducated populations having to farm without proper training and resources and farming in harsh environments.

Not to take away from your point but this yet another dimension in which I see a huge parallel with Portugal. You'd see the exact same thing here, and anyone who grew up in the countryside will look to have a little plot somewhere even if they moved to the city 50 years ago.

kinda like when people wash their cars or tend to their gardens. sure, the ROI is bad and they could just work more at their day-job and earn enough to employ someone to do it, but not everything needs to be quantified by money- some people just want to do chores to relax and live.

NA and EU have plenty of local artisanal products. It just doesn't have the some appeal as Japan, which tends to occupy a hallowed spot in the minds of educated/nerdy guys on the internet.

> All stories of extremely small batch but precisely crafted products seem to come out of Japan.

idk. Most of my YouTube recommendations are exactly that but from all around the world lol. I can’t even say most are from Japan. I would be lying if I did.

As a very simple example, I just watched a video about some candy company in Massachusetts that has been hand-making hard candy the same way for more than a hundred years.

(To stay honest, I do tend to subscribe to channels where the entire purpose is to showcase niche things from all around the world. Great Big Story, for example.)

japan is roughly 1.5% of the world population. where do they stack up in your video feed (maybe even leave out half the world's population, so call it 3%)?

Uhh, not sure if you misinterpreted what I said. I said that most of the videos in my feed aren’t Japan-related.

i'm saying that because it's a small number of people, most of them shouldn't be Japan related. but if the Japan related topics are more than 3% of your feed, then Japan is by estimation overrepresented, i.e. Japan likely does have a culture of exacting artisanship, i.e. opposite of what you are providing evidence for.

We’re not saying the opposite actually. I agree with what you’re saying, BUT:

> idk. Most of my YouTube recommendations are exactly that but from all around the world lol. I can’t even say most are from Japan. I would be lying if I did.

“Exactly that” = small batch, artisan videos

“From all around the world lol” = not only from Japan

“I can’t even say that most are from Japan” = Most of the videos on my feed aren’t from Japan

I think you’re hung up on the “exactly that” part.

I didn’t say “most of my YouTube recommendations are small batch, artisan videos from Japan and the rest are from all around the world.”

I said “most of my YouTube recommendations are small batch, artisan videos from all around the world.”

I didn’t estimate how many videos are Japan-related. I didn’t need to. GP said that “all stories like this are from Japan”. I gave my opinion that he’s wrong based on my YouTube recommendations. Not all stories are from Japan. Even with your misinterpretation of my comment, the conclusion remains the same lol since it was a reply to GP. You seem to have read my comment without that context.

Whether Japanese videos are overestimated (or underestimated which is probably closer to reality) in my feed is meaningless to the conversation that I was having with GP since the discussion (based on the highlighted quote from GP’s comment) was about whether all stories like that come from Japan. The conclusion is “no, not all stories like that come from Japan”.

Thanks for trying to teach me basic statistics though, I guess!

"Old vine" wines are pretty close to this, and that's a large niche; walk into any large city's grocery store and you can probably find at least one. Similar idea: old vines, undisturbed land, small batches, artisan production.

My hypothesis is that Japanese people just appreciate high-quality products more. In the sense that even poor people, which of course exist in Japan, are willing to save up money and occasionally splurge on upscale items, vs poor people in USA who prefer to "average out" their spending and just buy the best that they can afford daily.

Some evidence:

1) Japan has a higher percentage of iPhone users (65.88%) compared to USA (56.74%), while being poorer than USA on most metrics (GDP, median income, PPP-adjusted income etc.)

2) I don't have quantitative data, but just from experience Japan has so many more high-fashion stores, expensive pastry bakeries, expensive candy makers etc, when compared to USA. And if the stores are there, the customers must exist too.

And before people chime in about blue vs green, SMS is barely used here. Everyone uses LINE. Everyone.

https://line.me/ja/

Japan's obsession with tradition gives me real Europe vibes.

The people selling it praise it, the people nearby have pride.

I eat it and after all the hype, am disappointed. If I try really really hard, I can trick my brain into thinking its worthwhile. (I did just spend a bunch of money, traveled across the world, I should be able to enjoy this more than something I grow in my garden.. right?)

I'd love blind taste tests with children(or adults if you deem them better).

Children have horribly underdeveloped palates. Generally novices in anything, food or otherwise, have trouble appreciating the nuances that make something beautiful.

Could also just say different - children also have an unlimited tolerance for things that are sweet. Some adults I think never get past it much & have what I call super smellers too. But yea it’s like they can also lack the tastebuds that’d help them appreciate bitter things later in life, like most adults do. Could just be natural that our tastebuds from when were kids change or die off sorta, which allows for the fuller palate.

Tbh though I can’t stand bitter & earwax level IPAs. Just gives me headaches.

Relevant link I had handy from writing my own reply

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/ja...

Is it an irony that the very same nuance detection is often used in so many biases and other degenerate judgements?

I have loved that my kids find basically everything beautiful. Beetles in the backyard? Amazing! Snakes? Cute! Coyotes? Leave the chickens alone, you adorable canine!

Are they underdeveloped? I mean, yeah. I don't disagree with the assertion. I sometimes question the directions that we develop ourselves into, though.

I don't think calling this a degenerate judgement is fair. I too have a child and I too admire the gusto with which she experience the world. But when your child is amazed by a beetle in the backyard, your sense of amazement stems not from the beetle, but from the fact that your child can be amazed by a beetle. You're amazed specifically because your child sees the world in a way that you don't. And so I fully believe that a child believes basic staples taste better than the finest cuisine, but that doesn't make their taste a good proxy for adults.

Apologies, that isn't the degenerate judgement I was referring to. In that, I meant most other banal prejudices and such. The diversion to children was just exploring easy topics that show many fears/judgements are learned.

Specifically, the beetle and such are ones that I know I somewhat imprinted on them. If I see beetles, I will shuffle them around so that they are safe from whatever work I'm doing. Such that my kids find them cute and like helping them, where they can. We've had other kids over that find them disgusting and can't believe we would touch them.

Does this mean that some things can't taste better than others? I definitely don't think so. But I find a lot of the attempts at making that objective questionable, at best.

If children were in charge, they'd make everything taste like chicken nuggets. Kind of like the Matrix.

Plus, everything would be beige.

i'm pretty sure that not once ever have i heard a kid say their favorite color is beige. from kid's, i'd expect everything to be bright colors.

Given the comment I was replying to, I thought it would be obvious that my comment was in the context of food.

At least IME, some kids will only eat beige food (fries/chips, battered/breaded meat/fish etc).

Popsicles are typically brightly colored. They also tend to like to eat fruits which are rather bright. Sounds like your grasping. Or I am

No that's the favorite color of old women.

They have more healthy taste buds do they not? Perhaps they have the best taste of all.

I don't know, from 6 to 26, my tasting buds would be ruined by sugar and couldn't see difference between beef and lamb or veal vs pork.

Now my daughter, that's another matter..

> couldn't see difference between beef and lamb or veal vs pork

From 6 to 26? What changed at 26 lol? Are you saying that you stopped eating sugar? I’m surprised by the beef vs lamb comparison. Lamb has so much iron in it that it tastes like blood to me.

Maybe “sugar” isn’t why you couldn’t tell the difference. Especially if you’re saying your daughter doesn’t have that issue lol. I’m honestly perplexed by your comment.

I read that too much sugar can dull the taste of sweetness, which makes sense. I can’t see how it can dull the taste of blood though lol (unless you’re a mosquito).

Basically from 10, I was drinking like 0.5L to 1L of soda a day.

I was eating rarely meat, and my parents couldn't cook, I think at one stage, I was eating McDonald burgers 2 to 5 times a week. So while I was practicing a good amount of sports to burn these calories, it couldn't be good.

26 was when I moved out, started preparing food myself, started really reducing my overall alcohol and soda intake and more exposed to good food.

My daughter eats much more often meat, almost no processed food, high quality ingredients and cooking.

Yeah, it seems like sugar wasn’t the issue then. It seems like you’re saying that you just weren’t exposed to different foods.

(Unless, you’re saying that McDonalds has lamb burgers in whatever country you live in and you couldn’t tell the difference between their beef and lamb burgers? Cause I can definitely see this. I just looked up that McDs in India used to have lamb burgers.)

Novices don't appreciate nuance that trained experts focus on ... yes, that makes sense. But children do actually have more papillae (taste buds) than adults. As we age, we may gain skill in describing what we sense but we also lose taste buds which give us the raw sensory input to start with.

Also on the plus side, children also lack bias and cultural filters and blindspots, which are hard to avoid in adulthood. Kids notice things adults do not and kids don't hold back from talking about details which adults have dulled themselves to or have been trained to not speak of for reasons of tradition or politeness. (Sometimes those things need to be said and we're all thinking them!)

"Out of the mouths of babes."

> But children do actually have more papillae (taste buds) than adults. As we age, we may gain skill in describing what we sense but we also lose taste buds which give us the raw sensory input to start with.

Sure, but the point is that "nuanced" fancy food is optimized for the taste bud setup of adults, not children. So while theoretically, i guess, you can craft a food piece for children that would be the kind of mindblowing that adults can't experience anymore, that's not what expensive cuisine is optimizing for.

They're also famously bad at tasting wine

They may be underdeveloped but they are also significantly more sensitive to various flavours than adults

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/ja...

sometimes it's not just about the flavor but the tradition itself. You're participating in an act and culture that has stretched throughout time and creates a shared experience to those in the past and hopefully future

I hate to push the idea of experience, but you can try that next time.

That is, don't try and take in the taste individually. Look around and experience everything with you and try to imprint some of that into tasting it. Close your eyes and set the idea that it was all a part of it.

Then, later, if you can get back to this specific taste, it can help remind you in very physical ways of being there and having that experience.

You seem to be describing a way to lie to yourself about the taste.

The brain isn't a perfect machine - you can't just isolate the chemical reaction that your tastebuds have and say that anything else is lying to yourself about taste.

Breathing through your nose is lying to yourself about the taste too but if you hold your nose while you eat then you won't taste anything.

I mean, sorta? This would be like claiming that folks that enjoy a long bike ride are finding a way to lie about difficult physical tasks. (Or marathon runners, or any other difficult thing.)

That is, I'm pointing out that you can use unique tastes to imprint experiences. And if you do that, it is not surprising that you can grow to like the taste, as it is no longer an isolated thing, but a physical reminder of other things.

If you work really hard at it, perhaps you can convince yourself of anything. But, notice I used the word work there. Those marathon runners are putting in an active effort to motivate themselves.

No one wants to have to put effort into convincing themselves they're enjoying good wine with their experience.

Maybe. Some people really want to imprint moments in time. Incorporating a distinct taste is a great way to help in that. Really, the more senses you can fire all together and notice, the more I would think you could imprint a moment.

Taste itself is a deception. Studies have shown that if you dye a steak blue, it will taste subjectively worse to the eater than if it were a normal color, even though the taste should be chemically identical. With taste tests of identical foods, where one is mentioned to be a higher price than the other, the person eating it will prefer the "taste" of the more expensive one.

That "taste" as popularly defined is already a multi-sensory experience probably isn't controversial to you. Most would agree that plugging your nose alters your tasting experience of a food. I fail to see why other sensory organs like ears and eyes are not fair game to include in the experience. Weak beer tastes better on a hot patio. Sipping brandy tastes better next to a crackling fire.

I think of it more as paying closer attention to certain facets of the experience, and less to others. It's not a lie- those elements are present, to greater or lesser degrees. Nothing is being spun from whole cloth.

There's no such thing as objective taste. There's only subjective perception of taste.

I'd like to extrapolate this further.

Don't make yourself independent from the experience. If you're already enjoying yourself, you will enjoy the taste (of whatever is in debate) even more. You will associate the taste with the story of its creation as well as your personal experience. Aim for the memorable experience with family/friends over consuming "the best" (sometimes it can be the same thing!) and you will enjoy it far more often. It took a long time to convince my ever-optimization-focused brain to choose this path.

And a corollary to this argument is to never look down on someone for enjoying something you don't like - they simply found a way to experience joy where you didn't.

A lovely extrapolation! All of it.

I wish I could not only upvote, but add a massive underline to that last sentence.

the taste-journey people undertake before arriving at specific and sought after examples is not something you can skip, you may be disappointed but probably you are just not looking for what you found.

Sounds like you're trying too hard to enjoy it and not just enjoying it.

I traveled in Italy recently and it was fantastic, the food, tradition and the experience was amazing. I wasn't looking for tradition, I just saw tradition, I experienced it and loved it.

IMO it is not tradition, but variety that is amazing. A lot of variety comes from maintaining traditions, because otherwise we'd all just converge on the One True Way of doing things.

I think US culture, which I suppose you're from, is on a very lonely path food-wise - people from all over the world enjoy trying and making other culture's dishes, not everything is for everyone, but this American-style "I can't get into anything, ever, which I am not used to" is so unique.

>> I eat it and after all the hype, am disappointed.

"Fine" wine has almost nothing to do with taste. It is about culture. It is about history and travel. It is about wealth. It is about demonstrating one's ability and acceptance within a particular society. It is about pretending. The fact that an elite wine only available to a rarified few actually tastes horrible is very much beside the point.

I love it when HN galaxy brains talk about stuff they clearly know nothing about.

If you can produce a passable wine in your garden I would certainly be impressed.

Ignore whatever expectations people put into you, and go at something with a clear and unprejudiced (in either direction) mind. Take things on their own terms, that way you'll see far easier that a lot of well-known stuff is nothing special and that a great deal of common, overlooked stuff is actually a damn sight better than people give it credit. It's a net win.

It's almost like things like food and drinks are incredibly subjective, and things that are highly praised by some won't be enjoyable for others.

It's fine to admit to yourself you didn't like something that was hyped.

But "worthwhile" can mean so many things! If you're going to place X to try "the best Y", with that as your only goal, you're almost always going to be disappointed. Did you try something _new_? Was it _interesting_ in some ways? Was the _experience_ around it nice? Did you learn something about your preferences for Y in the process?

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