100% Muscat Bailey A. Surrounded by mountains and rivers, Yamanashi is the most spectacular vineyard region in Japan. Lumière's main vineyards are very special, located in areas with alluvial soils and decomposed granite rocks, which provide great drainage. The vineyards are cultivated using grass cover crop and no-tillage systems. This enhances the true nature of the grapes, allowing the wines to express their utmost potential.

All the grapes are harvested by hand, then are hand-sorted on a sorting table and gently deposited into the destemmer. A gravity-flow system is utilised to bring the wines down naturally from the fermentation tank to the ageing barrels without mechanical pumps.

The wine ages in traditional underground granite stone tanks (Ishigura) that were constructed in 1901. A total of 10 such fermenters were built, with an underground passage running through 10 such units, side by side. Built with the purpose of holding large quantities of wine, each fermenter can roughly hold 10,000 litres. In 1998, the Ishigura fermentation tank was officially certified as a tangible cultural property of Japan and designated as a key component of Japan’s cultural heritage in 2018. This unique winemaking method involves plenty of manual labour, from using handcrafted bamboo drainboards as a filtration device to getting underground to drain out the final wine from the mouth of the stone storehouse.