Building another Boom Japan is a country that embraces fads and trends. And in the 1990s, the country went wine crazy. A combination of factors, including media reports about the health benefits of red wine and the triumph of a Japanese sommelier, Shinya Tasaki, at the 1995 sommelier world championships, fueled a boom that saw wine
consumption treble between 1995 and 1998. In fact, in 1998, Japan became the largest export market by value for wines from both Bordeaux and California, according to a 1999 report by The Economist magazine. Although wine imports to Japan continue to steadily grow, the grape-based beverage accounts for only around 3.2 percent of all
alcohol consumed. The likes of beer, chuhai highballs and shochu liquor are the preferred drinks of choice. Bill Campbell is the founder and CEO of Hotei Wines, a Tokyo-based importer of premium California wines. iNTOUCH’s Nick Jones sat down with the Club Member to discuss the rise of wine in Japan. Excerpts:
iNTOUCH: Will the level of wine consumption in Japan ever reach the amounts drunk in countries like France?
coming in. And the younger generation have often gone overseas as students or on their honeymoons and they see people drinking wine, try it and some come back and say, “Well, I’d actually like to drink wine more often.”
the shelf at ¥500. It’s not the stuff that a longtime wine drinker would necessarily want to drink, but it’s the entry-level vehicle for giving people experience.
Campbell: It could certainly be multiples of where it is now: 2.6 liters of wine per person, per year—three bottles of wine. Japan’s a wealthy country, people love to drink and they’re really just discovering wine. iNTOUCH: So is wine in its infancy here? Campbell: Japan’s been making wine for 150 years. It’s not like it’s never been here, but in one sense it’s early days. What’s happening is you’re getting this generational shift. The older generation are drinking shochu, whiskey, brandy, spirits and sake, and as they get too old to drink or pass away, those drinkers are moving off the peak spending part of the demographic curve and the new guys are
30 October 2012 iNTOUCH
iNTOUCH: So we can expect a steady rise in wine consumption then. Campbell: One of the trends is the increase in bulk wine, where they bring it here in a tanker and bottle it in a local bottling plant, so the transport is more efficient and the import taxes are much lower. Bringing wine into Japan in bulk means that you can end up with wine in a bottle at a much cheaper price. Traditionally, the wine market was a fine wine market—¥3,000, ¥5,000, ¥10,000 a bottle—but when you want to get out to all 120 million people, you need stuff on
iNTOUCH: Although French wines no longer completely dominate, they still make up 35 percent of the market. Why do they still have such a strong presence? Campbell: Mainly for historical reasons. The JSA [Japan Sommelier Association] study guide is almost entirely about France and so for every sommelier who has gone through that [training], serving French wine is easier than something that you may not have heard of before. iNTOUCH: Why then have French wines lost their stranglehold on the market? Campbell: That’s easy: the French got