Domaine Mont

Domaine Mont is the work of Atsuo Yamanaka, who came to Hokkaido not for wine but for snow. Born in Koga City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Yamanaka fell in love with snowboarding while attending Waseda University and obtained his instructor's certification, eventually moving to Hokkaido full-time.

During the off-season, the local instructors around him were farmers. That proximity to agriculture sparked something, and when he was assigned to a wine-serving restaurant at a resort during one summer, the pull became specific. He obtained his sommelier certification, and as he studied wine more deeply, particularly the way each vineyard expressed something different, he found himself wanting not just to serve wine but to grow the grapes himself.

That desire led him to Domaine Takahiko, one of Japan's most influential natural wineries, where he trained under Takahiko Soga from 2014 to 2016. In spring 2016, he established Domaine Mont on an abandoned plot in the Nobori district of Yoichi, land that had been swallowed by forest over 15 years of disuse. The previous owners, the Iino family, had farmed this hillside since 1897, when Iino Tetsujiro arrived from Toyama Prefecture during the Meiji era. Yamanaka cleared the birch and pine trees by hand, one by one with a chainsaw, and levelled the ground to plant his vineyard. He considers it an honour to continue this land's century-old agricultural history.

Today, the estate covers approximately 3 hectares, with 1.8 hectares under cultivation, on east-facing slopes at roughly 50 metres altitude. The well-drained volcanic soils support an ecosystem rich in earthworms, ladybugs, spiders, and other life, which is a direct result of the land's long fallow period and Yamanaka's commitment to organic cultivation. He obtained Japanese JAS organic certification, using only dilute Bordeaux mixture and no herbicides, chemical fertilizers, or insecticides.

He has committed the entire vineyard to a single variety: Pinot Gris. He chose it because of its genetic closeness to the Pinot Noir he studied at Domaine Takahiko, believing that Pinot Gris's thin skin allows for the delicate, nuanced expression he seeks: wines that are "Japanese in their refinement." He started with 2,200 vines and has expanded to roughly 5,000–6,000.

One of Domaine Mont's most distinctive choices is the practice of ungrafted, own-rooted viticulture on some of his Pinot Gris, which is extremely rare globally since the phylloxera crisis of the 19th century devastated European vineyards. In most wine regions, grapevines are grafted onto resistant American rootstock; instead he cultivates some of his Pinot Gris on their own roots, which is a calculated risk made possible by the fact that phylloxera has never been recorded in Yoichi; one theory holds that snowmelt flooding the soil each spring drowns the pest.

The winery name itself carries layers of meaning. "Mont" references both the French word for mountain and the kanji in Yamanaka's surname (山, "mountain"). The label features an adaptation of his family crest: the Yamanaka "maru ni mittsu cha no mi" (circle with three tea seeds), reflecting his family's Japanese tea retail business. In the logo, the red represents the sun, blue represents water, and green represents the earth.

In the cellar, Yamanaka practises minimal intervention: wild yeast fermentation, no sulphites, no fining, no filtration. His philosophy is one of deliberate simplicity, designed so that local Yoichi farmers can also eventually make wine without requiring prohibitively expensive equipment or expertise. He wants winemaking to become a local culture, not an exclusive craft.