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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 900 — map & full exif
Try This One
one of what must have been 1,000 wines
This evening I went to a large (for Kyoto) wine-tasting event at Kyoto Station, sponsored by Liquor Mountain (a sort of Trader Joe's of central Japan). I don't know anything about wine other than “tasty, not tasty, untried”, so today was able to bolster the ranks of the first two categories.
I went with Shimada-san, Paul Barr, and another friend, Luc...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 2200 — map & full exif
A Particular Taste
most every kind under the sun
It was interesting to be able to taste (and compare/contrast) so many different products. I learned that there was no correlation between price and whether I liked it. I kept notes on a few I really liked, so I'll have to head over to Liquor Mountain next week to pick some up....
I haven't really looked at the pictures yet, but most were like those above, so any followup post will likely be boring, but we'll see.
Just curious: Where were the wines from? Does Japan have a wine region, or were these imports from Australia, New Zealand, etc.?
Japan does have some wineries, but most wines are imported from the standard wine countries…. France, Chili, America, Australia, Germany, Portugal. I don’t recall seeing any fro New Zealand, but I didn’t pay that much attention. Luc was looking for French wines, and for the most part I limited myself to trying those he said were worthy to try (because I couldn’t possibly try more than a small percent, so I wanted to make them count). —Jeffrey
Its comforting to know that if I ever move to Kyoto, I don’t have to worry about missing ridiculously named liquor stores… Fear not, faithful subjects of Bottle King (found in New Jersey, USA) grab your goblets and mountain gear… onward we march to LIQUOR MOUNTAIN!!! What a fantastic name.
Looking forward to finding out what wines you end up with. Also if you ever come across any good Japanese wines (Kobe region perhaps?) please post your findings. It would be a nice treat to bring some fancy non-sake Japanese wine back to USA for some of my wine snob friends.
In my area Trader Joe’s is not a liquor store at all. They are a grocery store.
For liquor stores we have Total Wine… Speaking of stupid names.
I like wine and have a decent 500 bottle collection. While working on a consulting assignment in Tokyo I found one of my Japanese team members was a certified french sommelier . Research what is required to get the certification and wondered what he was doing working for me. That said he did take me to some great places to taste wine. One thing I noticed is the Japanese prize French wine over American wines. I found French wines across all the quality grades, but American wines were typically only the lower end stuff. Just an interesting story.