Okayama
岡山県
The 'Land of Sunshine', from Niimi's limestone naturals to Akaiwa's Muscat heritage.
About Okayama
- Producers listed
- 10
- Most wineries in
- 新見市・赤磐市
- Founded 2010 or later
- 60%
- 6 of 10 with a known founding year
Okayama Prefecture, in Japan's Chugoku region, is an emerging wine area nicknamed the 'Land of Sunshine' (Hare no Kuni) for its mild climate and low rainfall. Winemaking is concentrated in two hubs: Niimi, in the northern highlands, where limestone soils and wide diurnal temperature swings suit Domaine Tetta's natural, low-intervention wines from a hilltop vineyard at 400m; and Akaiwa, on the Kibi Highlands' southern slopes, long known for table-grape growing and home to Koresato Winery (Campbell Early, Riesling) and Sapporo's large Okayama Winery. Okayama has historically been Japan's leading producer of Muscat of Alexandria table grapes, and this heritage now feeds aromatic white wines alongside growing plantings of Chardonnay and Merlot.
Best for
Fans of natural, low-intervention wine (Domaine Tetta) and those curious about Japan's historic Muscat of Alexandria table-grape terroir.
Food Pairings
Seto Inland Sea seafood (sea bream, conger eel), Okayama-style barazushi, and dishes featuring the prefecture's famous white peaches and Muscat grapes.
Winery Map of Okayama
Of the Okayama wineries on Vinami, we show the 10 whose locations we have verified.
1 wineries without a published street address are listed below but not shown on the map.
Wineries by Municipality
- 新見市4
- ColtradaFounded 2013
- Domaine TettaFounded 2016
- Kurokamiyama Vineyard(contract-made)Founded 2014
- Okayama Wine ValleyFounded 2018
- 赤磐市2
- Koresato WineryFounded 1985
- Sapporo Wine Okayama WineryFounded 1984
- 倉敷市2
- Funao WineryFounded 2004
- Grape ShipFounded 2021
- 岡山市1
- La Grande Colline JaponFounded 2017
- 真庭市1
- Hiruzen WineFounded 1987
Addresses and founding years are verified against each winery's official website and public information from local governments and industry bodies. Sources are listed on each producer's page.
Producers
コルトラーダ
Coltrada
Coltrada is a small family winery run by husband-and-wife team Kozo and Michiko Hosaka in Tetta, Niimi City, Okayama Prefecture — the same limestone karst plateau that gave rise to Domaine Tetta. Inspired by a trip through Italy, the couple planted their first vines in 2013, trained locally, and released early vintages under contract fermentation at La Grande Colline in Okayama before completing their own winery in 2021. Since the 2017 harvest they have crafted their reds and whites from grapes alone, with no additives, minimal pesticide use, and no herbicides. Their name — a fusion of the Italian coltivare (to cultivate) and strada (road) — echoes both their own names and the shared path of cultivating this land. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Shokoshi and Muscat Bailey A share the plateau with Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc and Semillon, alongside wheat and azuki beans grown in reclaimed nearby fields.
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shop.coltrada.com/ドメーヌ・テッタ
Domaine Tetta
Domaine Tetta is a pioneering winery in the Tetta district of Niimi City, Okayama Prefecture, founded in 2016 by Ryuta Takahashi, a local construction company owner who began reviving abandoned vineyards on this hillside in 2005. Perched at roughly 400 meters on rare limestone soil reminiscent of Champagne and Chablis, the estate now cultivates around 22 grape varieties — led by Chardonnay and Pinot Noir — across 8 hectares, alongside experimental plantings and even a cuvée from the table grape Aki Queen. Winemaking favors minimal intervention: wild-yeast fermentation, rain-cut cultivation instead of chemical sprays, gravity-flow processing, and aging in former limestone mining tunnels, all aimed at letting the site's singular terroir speak clearly in the glass.
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tetta.jp/ふなおワイナリー
Funao Winery
Funao Winery is a third-sector (public–private) winery established in 2004 in the Funao district of Kurashiki, Okayama — a coastal area that has cultivated Muscat of Alexandria table grapes for roughly 70 years and become Japan's foremost producing region for the variety. Founded to preserve local viticulture amid an aging farming population, the winery is led by representative director Yoshiharu Iwase and produces wines made 100% from Funao-grown Muscat of Alexandria, thinning bunches with the same care used for table grapes to concentrate flavor. Using skin contact, select yeasts, and a generous free-run juice fraction, Funao Winery crafts a lineup ranging from extra-sweet to special dry styles, plus a Muscat Bailey A red, a rosé, and a sparkling wine, sold at its shop within Atago-yama Fureai Park.
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www.funaowinery.com/グレープシップ
Grape Ship
Grape Ship is a boutique natural wine producer in the Funao district of Kurashiki, Okayama — a coastal area that has grown Muscat of Alexandria table grapes for over 130 years. Founder Kazunori Matsui, a former French-trained chef, discovered natural wine while studying in France, returned to his hometown of Funao in 2010 to take up viticulture, planted his first vines in 2012, and opened the winery in 2021. Working a 1.5-hectare organic (JAS-certified) vineyard, Matsui ferments with indigenous wild yeast, adds no sulfites, and uses gravity-flow, pump-free winemaking to keep the fruit's delicate aromatics intact, producing gentle, low-alcohol wines built around Muscat of Alexandria alongside Syrah, Grenache, Marsanne, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, and the indigenous Shokoshi variety.
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grapeship.jp/ひるぜんワイン
Hiruzen Wine
Hiruzen Wine is a third-sector agricultural production winery on the Hiruzen Plateau in Maniwa, Okayama, at the northern edge of Daisen-Oki National Park. The project began in 1978 as a local government initiative to turn the region's wild-growing yamabudo (Vitis coignetiae) into a signature product, and the company was formally established with its own fruit-wine brewing license in 1988, releasing what was then one of the only commercial yamabudo wines in western Japan. Led by representative Keiji Ueki, the winery moved into a new facility in 2010 that lets visitors watch the yamabudo being pressed and fermented, and its 2-hectare estate vineyard supplies fruit prized for deep color, high acidity, and iron and polyphenol content. The lineup spans dry and off-dry reds, rosés (including the flagship Sansho Rosé), whites made from regional grapes, sparkling wine, and grappa distilled in-house, several of which have won awards at the Japan Wine Competition, Sakura Awards, and Japan Wine Challenge.
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hiruzenwine.com/是里ワイナリー（株式会社是里ワイン醸造場）
Koresato Winery
Koresato Winery (officially Koresato Wine Brewery Co., Ltd.) was founded in 1985 by a cooperative of local grape farmers in the Koresato district in northern Akaiwa City, Okayama Prefecture, an upland area at 300-400m elevation known for its wide diurnal temperature swings. In 1995 the winery relocated its production facility into the Forest Park Deutsches Wald (German Village) theme park, where visitors can view the bottling line through glass windows and taste all of the winery's wines on-site. Rather than owning its own vineyards, Koresato Winery sources 100% of its grapes from the Koresato district's dedicated growers, crafting fresh, approachable wines from table-grape varieties such as Campbell, Muscat Bailey A, Pione, Koshu, and Riesling, alongside a distinctive dessert wine made from the prized Shimizu white peach. The winery positions itself as a bridge between local grape farmers and wine lovers, aiming for wines that both beginners and wine professionals can enjoy.
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koresato-wine.jp/黒髪山葡萄園
Kurokamiyama Vineyard
Kurokamiyama Vineyard is a one-man grower-winery at the foot of Mt. Kurokamiyama in Niimi City, Okayama Prefecture — a separate district from the better-known Okayama Wine Valley, which sits across town in Tetta-cho. Proprietor Akiyoshi Hayakawa moved from Osaka to Niimi in 2012, trained at nearby Domaine Tetta, and in 2014 completed roughly 0.5 hectares of vineyard on a former fallow field in the Kamikumatani district. He grows Sauvignon Blanc as his core variety, alongside Muscat Bailey A (planted 2020) and Pinot Gris (planted 2022), farming a small, hands-on plot that yields only around 1,200 bottles a year. As the winery holds no crushing license of its own, the 100% estate-grown fruit is vinified under contract — historically at Hitomi Winery in Shiga Prefecture, with more recent vintages made at wineries such as Hiruzen Winery and Funao Winery in Okayama. The wines are naturally fermented and unfiltered, sold as a still white called "blaank" and a pét-nat-style sparkling wine called "sparkle," both built to let the grape's own character speak for itself.
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www.kurokamiyama.sakura.ne.jp/ラ・グランド・コリーヌ・ジャポン
La Grande Colline Japon
La Grande Colline Japon is the Japanese natural-wine project of Hirotake Ooka, a Tokyo-born winemaker who studied oenology in Bordeaux, then spent two decades in France's Rhône Valley as vineyard manager for E. Guigal in Hermitage and for cult Cornas grower Thierry Allemand. In 2002 he founded his own Domaine de la Grande Colline in the Ardèche, one of the first Japanese-owned wineries in France. He returned to Japan in 2016 and, in 2017, opened this independent sister project in Tomiyoshi, Kita-ku, Okayama City, once the country's leading Muscat of Alexandria table-grape area. Working aging, organically farmed Alexandria vines alongside Cabernet Sauvignon from Kobe and the indigenous Yamabudo-hybrid grape Koshoshi from Yamanashi, Ooka applies the same radical methods he honed in France: no pesticides or herbicides, spontaneous fermentation with wild yeast, no fining or filtration, and almost always zero added sulfites. His 2021 book on natural winemaking won the New World Wine category at the 2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, and his tiny-production cuvées circulate internationally through natural-wine importers and fairs such as RAW WINE.
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www.lgcj.jp/岡山ワインバレー
Okayama Wine Valley
Okayama Wine Valley is a one-man winery run by Akiya Nonami in Tetta-cho, Niimi City, in the mountainous northwest of Okayama Prefecture. After being struck by the wines he tasted in Italy, Nonami left his IT career in Kawasaki, moved to Niimi in 2014, and in 2018 renovated a disused kindergarten at the foot of Mt. Aratoyama into a small winery and art gallery. The vineyards sit on a limestone karst plateau at 400-600m elevation, formed from an ancient seabed, giving mineral-rich, well-drained soil and cool temperatures well suited to fine winegrowing. Rather than the Japanese-native varieties common in the region, Nonami grows Italian grapes — Sangiovese and Nebbiolo for red, Chardonnay for white — tended on a small, walkable plot he describes as close enough to 'talk to the vines.' His winemaking follows a classical, minimal-intervention approach, choosing yeasts suited to each variety and aging in new French oak from the Tronçais forest. Wine labels are hand-designed by his partner Moe Kato, a lacquer artist, giving each cuvée a distinctive artisanal identity.
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okayamawine.jp/サッポロワイン岡山ワイナリー
Sapporo Wine Okayama Winery
Sapporo Wine Okayama Winery, located in Akaiwa City, Okayama Prefecture, was built in 1984 as Sapporo's second winery after production of its 'Polaire' brand outgrew the capacity of the original Katsunuma winery in Yamanashi. Benefiting from Okayama's mild Seto Inland Sea climate and abundant sunshine, the winery focuses on locally grown Muscat of Alexandria and Muscat Bailey A grapes, producing wines for the premium Grand Polaire label as well as standard lines. It is widely described as one of the largest wineries in western Japan and is a registered member of the Japan Winery Association. Public factory tours and the winery shop closed on March 15, 2024 due to reduced visitor demand after the COVID-19 pandemic, but wine production continues uninterrupted. Sapporo Breweries has announced that it will consolidate all of its wine manufacturing here by May 2025, closing the Katsunuma winery in Yamanashi and making Okayama its sole wine production site, including wines made from grapes grown in Nagano and Hokkaido.
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www.sapporobeer.jp/brewery/okayama/
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is Okayama best known for in Japanese winemaking?
- Okayama is historically Japan's leading region for Muscat of Alexandria table grapes, and today is known for two contrasting hubs: Niimi's limestone-driven natural wines and Akaiwa's long-established grape and wine industry.
- What is Domaine Tetta and why is it notable?
- Domaine Tetta is a natural wine producer in Niimi, founded in 2016, farming a hilltop vineyard at 400m on rare-for-Japan limestone soil. It uses reduced-pesticide, cover-crop viticulture and wild-yeast fermentation with minimal or no added sulfites.
- Which wineries are located in Akaiwa?
- Akaiwa is home to Koresato Winery, a grower-led producer making 'Koresato Wine' from Campbell Early and Riesling since 1985, and Sapporo Beer's Okayama Winery, one of the largest wineries in western Japan.
- What grape varieties are grown in Okayama?
- Muscat of Alexandria is Okayama's signature historic variety, alongside Campbell Early and Riesling in Akaiwa, and a growing presence of European varieties such as Chardonnay and Merlot in Niimi.
- Is Okayama a good starting point for exploring Japanese wine?
- Yes. Its mild, sunny climate and two distinct production styles — natural winemaking in Niimi and traditional grape-growing in Akaiwa — make it a compact but varied introduction to Japanese wine beyond Yamanashi and Nagano.