Tōmi City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan

Yutaka Nakajima embodies the archetype of a Japanese winemaker: low-key, thoughtful and deeply hands-on. From his small mountain house, he farms quietly and works in the cellar entirely by hand, using self-made, hand-cranked wooden tools to craft wines of quiet precision.

At 850 metres above sea level in Tomi, Nagano, Domaine Nakajima sits within the Chikumagawa Wine Valley. The region's cooler, drier climate, closer to Europe than much of Japan, allows for the planting of primarily French varieties. Since 2011, Nakajima has cultivated Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Chenin Blanc on a small slope threaded with wild grasses and herbs. In 2019, he added a higher-altitude site planted to Savagnin and Pinot Noir. Production remains tiny, just a few thousand bottles annually, each one shaped entirely by hand and by season.

Cabernet Franc 2024

This is one of the rarest wines we carry. Cabernet Franc at this altitude, in this climate, in the hands of a producer like Nakajima, is something genuinely uncommon. The variety finds an extraordinary home in Nagano's mountain air, where cool nights preserve aromatic intensity and slow ripening builds a fineness of tannin that warmer climates rarely achieve.

Nakajima's Cabernet Franc is grown on the same small slope he has farmed since 2011, threaded with wild grasses and herbs that speak directly into the wine. Made entirely without additives, fining or filtration, it is a wine of transparency and restraint, where the grape and the place are allowed to speak without interference.

On the nose, expect violet, dark cherry and a whisper of graphite, with an undercurrent of dried herbs and forest floor that is unmistakably Franc. The palate is at once structured and silky, with fine-grained tannins that carry the wine through a long, mineral finish. There is a tension here, a cool-climate energy, that makes it deeply compelling and genuinely age-worthy.

Production is extremely limited. This is the kind of bottle you open for a reason, and remember long after.