The Nigori & the Pioneer

The story of Hitomi Winery begins not with a vigneron but with an apparel entrepreneur and art collector named Reizo Zushi — a man who built a successful clothing company in Osaka and, in parallel, cultivated a deep passion for the ceramic arts. From a young age, Zushi collected pottery by Bernard Leach, the legendary British studio potter whose work bridged Eastern and Western ceramic traditions, and by the 1980s his collection had grown substantial enough that he wanted to share it with the public. He conceived of a museum in his hometown of Yongenji, Higashiomi City, Shiga Prefecture — a place where the warmth of Leach's stoneware could be appreciated in a setting that reflected the same values of craftsmanship, simplicity, and honest material expression that the pots embodied. But Zushi was also a wine enthusiast, and he understood that the experience of art is deepened by the accompaniment of good food, good conversation, and good wine. He wanted visitors to his museum to not merely look at pots but to sit, to drink, to talk — to experience the full spectrum of aesthetic pleasure that a well-designed place can offer. And so, alongside the museum, he decided to build a winery.

The project began in 1984 — seven years before the winery would officially open its doors. Zushi started from scratch: he acquired land, planted vines, and began the slow, patient work of establishing a vineyard in a region that was not then known for wine. Shiga Prefecture, south of Lake Biwa (Biwako), Japan's largest freshwater lake, had an agricultural tradition rooted in rice, tea, and vegetables, but viticulture was virtually unknown. The climate — humid summers, cold winters, and the moderating influence of the lake — was suitable for grapes but required adaptation and experimentation. Zushi approached this challenge with the same entrepreneurial energy that had built his apparel business: he researched, he consulted, he invested, and he waited. The vines took time to mature; the wines took time to develop; and the vision of a museum-winery complex where art and agriculture converged took time to realise. When Hitomi Winery officially opened in 1991, it was the second winery in Shiga Prefecture — a pioneer in a region that would eventually become home to only four wineries in total, making Hitomi's early commitment all the more remarkable.

Into this world of art, commerce, and nascent viticulture came Masahiko Senda — a winemaker whose path to Hitomi was driven not by art collecting or apparel manufacturing but by a pure, unwavering commitment to natural winemaking. Senda is one of Japan's longest-practicing natural winemakers, having embraced spontaneous fermentation, minimal additives, and low-intervention techniques long before "natural wine" became a global movement with its own festivals, critics, and controversies. In the early 1990s, when Hitomi Winery was finding its feet, natural winemaking in Japan was not a trend but a conviction — held by a small number of producers who believed that wine could be made honestly, without the industrial processes that dominated the industry, and that Japanese grapes could express something distinctively Japanese rather than merely imitating European models. Senda brought this conviction to Hitomi, and over the decades that followed he shaped the winery's identity into something unique: not a European-style estate producing clear, filtered, standardised wines, but a Japanese natural winery producing cloudy, unfiltered, vibrant wines that spoke of their place, their grapes, and their maker's philosophy.

The relationship between Zushi's founding vision and Senda's winemaking practice created a distinctive identity for Hitomi Winery — one that merged the aesthetic sensibility of the art collector with the agricultural honesty of the natural vigneron. Zushi had built the museum to celebrate Bernard Leach's pottery, and Leach's philosophy — that craft should serve function, that materials should speak honestly, and that tradition should be honoured while remaining open to innovation — resonated with Senda's approach to wine. The cloudy, unfiltered wines that Hitomi produced were not flawed or unfinished; they were honest expressions of process, in the same way that Leach's pots were honest expressions of clay and fire. The museum and the winery became two expressions of a single aesthetic: the belief that the handmade, the natural, and the slightly imperfect could be more beautiful, more meaningful, and more true than the machine-made, the chemically corrected, and the artificially polished. And in Masahiko Senda, Zushi found the winemaker who could translate this philosophy into liquid form.

The defining characteristic of Hitomi Winery — the quality that distinguishes it from every other producer in Japan and marks it as a true pioneer — is its commitment to nigori wine: unfiltered, slightly cloudy wine that is bottled with its natural sediment intact, creating a visual turbidity that recalls the nigori sake of Japanese tradition. This was not always the case. In the beginning, as Senda recalls, "every day was spent making textbook-perfect, clear wines" — the conventional approach that every winemaking school teaches, that every competition rewards, and that every consumer expects. The wines were filtered, fined, stabilised, and clarified until they shone with the bright, jewel-like transparency that the international wine industry considers the mark of quality. But something happened during a routine winery tour that would change the direction of Hitomi forever: participants sampled the unfiltered, cloudy wine directly from the tank, and their response was not disgust or confusion but unexpected, enthusiastic praise. They found the cloudy wine more interesting, more alive, more honest than the filtered version. And Senda, listening to their reactions, realised that he had been making wine for an imaginary critic rather than for real drinkers — that the clarity he had been pursuing was not a virtue but a concealment, a way of hiding the wine's natural processes behind a veil of industrial polish.

Around 1993, the trial production of "cloudy wine" began — a radical decision that made Hitomi Winery one of the first in Japan to produce wines in a natural, unfiltered, and unfined manner. The concept was unfamiliar in the market and met with much criticism: retailers refused to stock cloudy wine, consumers returned bottles thinking they were flawed, and the industry establishment dismissed the style as amateurish or unsanitary. The signage outside the winery even read "Hitomi Winery of Cloudy Wine" — a defensive declaration rather than a marketing slogan, an acknowledgment that the winery was doing something different and that this difference needed to be explained. But Senda persisted, driven by the conviction that the cloudy wine was not a mistake but a revelation — that the sediment, the lees, and the natural microbiology that remained in the bottle were not impurities to be removed but essential components of the wine's character, its texture, its flavour, and its vitality. And as the natural wine movement grew globally in the 2000s and 2010s, Hitomi's early commitment to unfiltered wine was vindicated: what had been dismissed as eccentricity became recognised as pioneering, and what had been criticised as flawed became celebrated as authentic.

The winemaking techniques that produce Hitomi's nigori wines are minimal and attentive, guided by the philosophy of letting the grapes and the natural environment do the work rather than imposing industrial control. Fermentation is spontaneous — carried out by wild yeasts that live on the grape skins, in the vineyard, and in the winery environment, with no selected, laboratory-cultured strains introduced. This is the most natural form of fermentation, the way wine was made for millennia before the invention of commercial yeast cultures, and it produces wines of greater complexity, greater individuality, and greater connection to their place of origin. The wild yeasts work slowly, unpredictably, and sometimes capriciously — a fermentation that takes three weeks with cultured yeast might take three months with wild yeast, and the winemaker's role is not to drive the process but to monitor it, to taste it, and to intervene only when necessary to prevent the development of off-flavours or the dominance of unwanted microbial populations. Senda has decades of experience with these fermentations, and his intuition — developed through thousands of tastings, hundreds of vintages, and countless hours of patient observation — guides his decisions about when to rack, when to blend, when to bottle, and when to wait.

The ageing of Hitomi's wines takes place primarily in neutral oak — barrels that have been used for multiple vintages and have lost their aggressive oak character, providing a gentle, oxidative environment that allows the wine to develop complexity without being dominated by wood flavours. The duration of ageing varies by cuvée and vintage, but the principle is consistent: enough time for the wine to settle, to integrate, and to develop the secondary aromas that distinguish mature wine from young wine, but not so much time that the wine loses its freshness, its vitality, and its connection to the vineyard. The wines are bottled unfiltered and unfined — the defining nigori character — which means that the natural sediment remains in the bottle, creating the cloudy appearance that is Hitomi's signature. This sediment is not merely visual; it is active, containing living yeast cells, bacteria, and organic compounds that continue to evolve in the bottle, creating a wine that changes over time, that rewards cellaring, and that offers a different experience with each pouring as the sediment settles or is disturbed.

The sulfur levels at Hitomi are minimal — sufficient to prevent oxidation and microbial spoilage during ageing and transport, but not so high as to sterilise the wine or to mask its natural vitality. Senda understands that sulfur is a necessary tool in natural winemaking, a way of protecting the wine without dominating it, and his decades of experience have taught him the precise levels that achieve this balance. The result is wines that are stable enough to travel and to age but alive enough to continue evolving in the bottle — wines that have the safety of minimal sulfur without the sterility of conventional levels. And the overall approach — spontaneous fermentation, neutral oak ageing, unfiltered bottling, minimal sulfur — produces a style that Senda describes as "rustic, vibrant, and alive": marked by cloudy textures, orchard fruit aromas, and a touch of wildness that is the signature of honest, low-intervention winemaking.

To understand Hitomi Winery, one must understand the concept of "Japanese natural wine" — not as a geographical category but as an aesthetic and philosophical position that Masahiko Senda has defined through decades of practice. He is not trying to make wine that wins medals at international competitions or impresses European critics with its adherence to classical standards; he is trying to make wine that is honest, alive, and unmistakably Japanese — wine that expresses the character of domestic grapes, the traditions of Japanese beverage culture, and the specific conditions of Shiga's Lake Biwa terroir. This is wine that draws inspiration from nigori sake, from the rustic farmhouse aesthetics of Japanese countryside culture, and from the principle of "Mindo Funi" — consuming what the land and season provide, without artifice or excess. The nigori style, with its cloudiness, its sediment, and its visible evidence of natural process, is the sensory foundation of this approach, and it is not a limitation or a defect but a distinctive strength that sets Hitomi apart from every other producer in Japan and beyond.

Senda's decades of commitment to honest, low-intervention wine have inspired many younger Japanese producers who followed in his footsteps — a legacy that extends far beyond the bottles that bear the Hitomi label. In the 1990s, when Senda was experimenting with unfiltered wine and facing criticism from an industry that valued clarity above all else, there were few allies and many detractors. The natural wine movement that would eventually validate his approach was still years away from gaining international recognition, and the concept of "natural wine" did not yet exist as a market category or a critical framework. Senda persisted not because he anticipated a movement but because he believed in the wine he was making — because the enthusiastic response of the tour participants who tasted cloudy wine from the tank convinced him that he was on the right path, and because his own palate told him that the unfiltered wine was more interesting, more complex, and more alive than the filtered version. This conviction, maintained through years of scepticism and resistance, is the mark of a true pioneer: someone who sees possibilities that others do not, who acts on that vision before it is validated by consensus, and who continues to act even when the consensus is against them.

The Bernard Leach connection — the museum that Zushi built alongside the winery — is more than a biographical detail; it is a key to understanding the aesthetic philosophy that unites Hitomi's art and wine. Leach, the British potter who spent years in Japan studying under the master Kenzan and who became the bridge between Japanese ceramic tradition and the Western studio pottery movement, believed that craft should serve function, that materials should be allowed to speak honestly, and that the handmade object should bear the marks of its making rather than being polished to an industrial perfection. These principles — honesty of material, visibility of process, and the beauty of the slightly imperfect — are precisely the principles that Senda applies to his winemaking. The cloudy wine is not a flawed clear wine; it is a different kind of wine, one that values the visible evidence of natural process over the concealment of industrial intervention. The sediment in the bottle is not dirt; it is the wine's history, its biology, its continuing life. And the slight variations from bottle to bottle, from vintage to vintage, are not inconsistencies; they are the signatures of a handmade product, in the same way that the slight asymmetries of a Leach pot are the signatures of a hand-thrown vessel rather than a machine-moulded one.

The future of Hitomi Winery is tied to Senda's continuing practice and to the maturation of the natural wine movement in Japan. As more consumers discover the vitality, complexity, and honesty of unfiltered, spontaneously fermented wines, Hitomi's early commitment to these methods positions it not merely as a historical curiosity but as a living tradition — a place where the pioneering spirit of the 1990s continues to inform the wines of the present. The small-batch production (around 1,000 bottles per label) ensures that each cuvée receives the attention and care that mass production cannot provide, and the 100% domestic grape policy maintains the estate's commitment to Japanese agriculture and Japanese terroir expression. The contract farming network — linking Shiga with Yamagata, Yamanashi, and other prefectures — creates a community of growers who share Senda's values and who contribute to a national rather than merely local natural wine culture. And the nigori style, once criticised and now celebrated, continues to challenge assumptions about what wine should look like, what it should taste like, and how it should be made.

In an age of industrial wine production, of homogenised flavours and marketing-driven branding, Hitomi Winery stands as a radical alternative — not because it rejects modernity but because it has chosen a different modernity, one that values honesty over polish, process over product, and the specific expression of a specific place over the standardised replication of an international style. Masahiko Senda is not merely making wine; he is making a case — that Japanese grapes can produce wines of international interest without imitating Europe, that the nigori aesthetic is a strength rather than a limitation, that spontaneous fermentation and minimal intervention are not risky experiments but time-honoured methods, and that a winery founded by an apparel magnate and art collector can become one of Japan's most important natural wine estates through the vision and persistence of a single winemaker. The 1991 founding, the 1993 nigori revolution, the Bernard Leach museum, the Yamagata grape connection, the Mindo Funi philosophy, and the decades of unwavering commitment to natural methods: all united in one bottle, one estate, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, place-specific, individually crafted Japanese natural wine on the shores of Lake Biwa.