A 33-year-old starts making wine from scratch in tsunami-hit Rikuzentakata
In Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, a town reshaped by the tsunami, 33-year-old Kyohei Oikawa has grown grapes on abandoned farmland and completed his first white wine, "Michiteiku".
The question the earthquake raised: why did I survive?
Rikuzentakata is a town on the Pacific coast of Iwate Prefecture, in north-eastern Honshu. It was badly damaged by the tsunami in the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. Kyohei Oikawa, then a high-school student, saw his home and family come through unharmed. Even so, the town’s landscape had changed completely, and before thinking about university entrance exams he began to ask himself how he should live and what it meant that he had been spared. He wanted to build an industry that would take root in his home town, and studied food at a university in the Kanto region. There he realised that the relatively mild climate and well-drained soil of his home town suited grape growing. After graduating he gained experience at a wine trading company and at a winery in France, and in 2020 he returned home and began planting vines.
The first white wine, born from abandoned farmland
Oikawa has gradually rented and gathered farmland that had fallen out of use. His vineyard now covers about 7,500 tsubo (around 2.5 hectares). The initial investment was a struggle, he says, but he has been supported by local people who lent or handed over their land. Because he does not hold a fruit-wine manufacturing licence, he relies on a winery outside the prefecture for the winemaking. In August 2025, his first white wine, “Michiteiku” (“Filling Up”), was completed, with around 100 bottles produced. For Oikawa, wine reflects a town’s people, culture and infrastructure, and could also become a “hub” connecting various industries. Working with local restaurants and fishermen, he has so far held 10 tours combining wine, food and nature, with a total of 200 participants.
Sea-salt notes and the “wine special zone”
According to Oikawa, wine made from Rikuzentakata grapes has a saltiness and minerality that make it easy to pair with seafood, shellfish in particular. At Sushi Matsuda, a sushi restaurant in the city visited on the tours, the pairings with local fish were well received. Its owner, Mitsuyo Matsuda, also has high hopes for wines that draw on the character of the local land. In March 2026, Rikuzentakata was designated a national “wine special zone”. The scheme makes it easier even for small businesses to obtain a fruit-wine manufacturing licence, and Oikawa had been lobbying the city for it for several years. It is the first such designation on the Iwate coast. Oikawa is now converting a former soba restaurant building into a winery. Once he has his licence, he expects to begin making wine from local grapes in February 2027.
“Michiteiku” amounts to only about 100 bottles and is not a wine you can buy in Europe. What deserves attention is how the “wine made entirely locally” project, starting in 2027, develops. European readers familiar with oysters and mussels from Zeeland or the shellfish dishes of Galicia will have little trouble imagining the saltiness and minerality of grapes grown by the sea. We look forward to continuing to follow a town, 15 years after the disaster, setting out as a new wine region.
参考・出典
- FNNプライムオンライン（岩手めんこいテレビ）「「ワインで故郷を盛り上げたい」33歳がゼロからの挑戦 震災を原点に陸前高田市でワイン造り 岩手県」 https://www.fnn.jp/articles/-/1052429
Sources
This article was written by The Sake Wire editorial team, summarising the public sources listed above. Images are our own.
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