Japan's oldest and largest wine school, the Academie du Vin, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Something of an institution in Japan's wine world, the academy has turned out more than 30,000 graduates in its two decades of operation. But rather than rest on its laurels, the school continues to reinvent itself, most recently by hiring Mineo Tachibana as general manager and engaging some of Japan's top new-wave wine luminaries to teach a series of upcoming seminars.
The academy took its name and inspiration from the original Academie du Vin in Paris. Englishman Steven Spurrier opened that school in 1973 to provide English-language wine instruction to expatriates in France. While Spurrier personally shot to fame after hosting what has become known as the "Paris Tasting" in 1976 -- in which a group of upstart Californian wineries beat out France's best wines in a blind tasting by French judges -- the school was eventually sold and later closed.
Then in 1987, a group of investors decided to open a school dedicated to wine in Tokyo based on the Academie du Vin concept.