Tokyo Natural Wine Guide (Updated Dec 2019)

Update - Dec 2019 - Since releasing this natural wine guide, this has become one of the top google results for “Tokyo Natural Wine” (#3) and “Tokyo Wine” (#5). It is by far the most popular post on this blog. Today we’ve added a few new places and updated our old recommendations. Since we first released in Sept 2018 rare wines have become harder to find. Bottles from Miroirs have effectively disappeared, though Kenjiro did open 40 bottles at a party attended by the who’s who of the Tokyo wine scene. Overnoy is elusive, though I did witness one change hands under the table at one of the bars I was at; the price was stifling. One restaurant network that I cannot recommend enough is Aux Amis. If you are familiar with the Japanese wine scene is that good wines are reserved for repeat customers. I was at one particular wine bar, and asked for a wine in the fridge (a Cavrodes, which is somewhat rare), and I was flat out told that they don’t sell it to first-timers. But at Aux Amis, the wines are all listed online in western style. There are around 10 restaurants and 10 wine lists for your reading pleasure. Excluding Aux Amis, the wine bars on this list are very relationship oriented, so get ready to be personable.

To download this guide to your own Google Maps account, click here.

What makes Tokyo different is that no one attempts to earn economic rent on providing an exceptional and curated experience. And there is no exuberant demand for these experiences that result in crazy prices and waitlists. That is to say the city is aging gracefully into late stage. In a city where quality is highly valued, it is so well supplied that no premium is ascribed to it.

My obsession with the city has grown with my exploration of the natural wine scene. As the Japanese took a liking to French wines, it was not long until they adopted the natural wine movement, which is by all accounts, a French phenomenon first and foremost. Natural wine, now in vogue globally, was largely accepted in Tokyo long ago. As a result, the cellars in Tokyo tend to go far back. Back vintages of exceptional wines that can be found nowhere else are available here. 

There is no place to drink natural wines like in Tokyo. The wines found in Tokyo are unrivaled in scope, availability and price. Spread out in little bars and restaurants across the city, Tokyo establishments serve rare wines like they were simple table wines (which I guess is the original intention of natural wines). Oenophiles scour Tokyo for two particular producers from the Jura: Overnoy and Domaine Des Miroirs. Miroirs is actually founded by a Japanese winemaker, who apparently learnt from Overnoy. When I went to Tokyo last December, I stumbled across Overnoy at a hole in the wall in Meguro. The restaurant “Margo” is hardly searchable on Google, and I believe I only went because it was one of the few options open for Sunday lunch. They were serving Overnoy by the glass for $20 when a bottle trades at auction for over $400. Some Thiebaud was casually available too if you weren’t feeling Overnoy. Now going back and actually trying to find these wines proved to be a greater challenge than just stumbling into natural wine bars. But I was able to track down some of each. Here is a list of the natural wines I tried in Tokyo. 

Very Rare

  • 2011 Domaine des Miroirs Saugette “Entre deux bleus” Savagnin

  • 2004 Radikon Modri (Pinot Noir)

  • 2012 Cantillon Kriek

  • 2000 Les Bigotes (Cossard, Burgundy)

  • 2002 Saint Epine Herve Souhaut (Syrah) - rare vintage

Rare

  • 2005 Radikon Merlot

  • 2013 Les Oeillet Yves Péron

  • 2016 Cotillon des Dames Yves Peron

  • 1959 Fruitiere Vinicole de Voiteur Chateau-Chalon (Vin Jaune)

  • 2011 Ganevat “Les Vignes de Mon Pere” (Savagnin)

Good but not really rare

  • 2012 Bressan Verduzze

  • 2014 Yvon Metras

  • 2016 Ganevat “Q-roulé” (Ploussard)

  • 2016 Cantina Giardino 'Gaia' Fiano Campania IGT

  • Jean Marc Brignot And Anders Frederik Steen - Don't Throw Plastic in The Ocean

Most of these wines range from impossible to difficult to find in most cities. Basically impossible to find in New York City.  None of the places except the place I got the Miroirs has a wine list, much less one that is posted online. So you need to look at Instagram posts to identify which places are more likely to have special wines. Then you can ask them when you go. For example, one beer place that I went to last time (also in December) had Cantillons in the back, but I had no idea because I didn’t ask for it. None of these wines were expensive in Tokyo (<$150), though some can trade at multiples of that in private markets. The absurdity of the price arbitrage partly explains why these restaurants have no wine list. A wine list can be targeted, whereas here the owner has some discretion. 

Note there is ample room for great conventional wines as well; they are mostly high-flying affairs typical for the category. Tokyo is a great place to drink excellent conventional wines, as I discovered going to a wine bar in the heart of Ginza. Enoteca Mille, which occupies some of the most expensive real estate in the world, retails wines at a globally competitive price, and provides tastings that, as far as I could tell, include only a 100% mark-up. A tasting of four Syrah wines cost $40 for 120mL, when each bottle would retail for over $100. 

One wine I took a liking to was a Landonne Cote Rotie (Rostaing), which had a novel combination of smoked meat and olives. The smell might be described as “brooding”, like what fatty leg of lamb drenched in provincial herbs might smell like when put on open flames.

What is not a fun experience in Tokyo is booking restaurants. Despite starting a booking process two months in advance, results were mixed. Going through a credit card concierge service, which is usually effective, is painful in Tokyo. For many reservations, they will contact the hotel concierge, and the hotel will make it instead. In general the response times are slower in Tokyo than any other city. Restaurants often prefer hotel concierges because the hotel will work on the restaurant’s behalf to track down missing guests and demand a cancellation fee. After an all nighter (due to Tsujiki market), I slept through a reservation, and a $100 cancellation fee was (rightly) exacted. The analogy would be for a Sheraton (that was about the level of the hotel) to have gone out of its way to facilitate this process. Hard to imagine in most other places.

A "drinking person's" tale of Tsujiki Market

The Tsujiki market opened public tours for Tuna auctions about 5 years ago, and is being relocated in October, making the next month the last set of tours. The new location will have tours but not with up close viewing. The tuna auctions are a classic jet lag activity, which involves drinking until midnight when the subways close and then going to line up for the tour. The tour begins at 5:40, but the line often fills out by 2:30am-3:00am. The result is a 5 hour wait for a ~25 minute view of the tuna auction. Then many participants will eat sushi breakfast in the outskirts of the market, which often involves further waiting.

Enough participants have the idea of coupling the auctions with a night of drinking such that the organizers have made a poster that reads “drinking people will not be allowed”. There are many good online guides on this tuna auction, but none of them mention this as a constraint. If you read the sign literally, you might assume that it just means that you cannot drink inside the premise as the tense of “drinking” implies an ongoing activity. But the actual intent of this sign is to exclude drunk people from entering. Certain participants were disallowed as they admitted to drinking the night before. Apparently a glass of wine at a dinner the night prior is enough to categorize the drinker as a “drinking person”. For much of the waiting time, the megalomaniac tour operator provided his views on Trump, nuclear bombs, Japanese food, credit card usage, etc. But most importantly there was a little self-reported witch hunt for people who had alcohol the night before. Only two people reported themselves. One of the tests implemented to determine membership into “drinking” person was the inability to stand on one feet for 30 seconds.

Tokyo’s maturity and relative order sets it apart from other Asian cities. Its obsessiveness with rules, tradition, self-sacrifice, quality and kindness makes it idyllic. Its global outlook is at odds with any charges of xenophobia. Western attitudes are adopted when they are superior to oriental ones. My recent stupor through the city made me appreciate it even more than I used to. As a travel destination, I would not be surprised if many sub-cultures exist such that wine is just one of them.