Matsubaya, a retail and wholesale firm from the town of Namie near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, is trying to revitalize businesses that were based in the district, using Georgian wine.
The firm, which evacuated to Tamura in central Fukushima Prefecture, is cooperating with H&N Wine Japan, a Tokyo-based importer that has a vineyard in Georgia, to establish a distribution channel for Georgian wine in the region hit by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.
Georgia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia, is widely believed to be where wine production originally began some 8,000 years ago. In the ancient Georgian traditional wine-making method, high-quality grapes with sugar content of 26 degrees Brix or more are fermented and stored in clay amphora-like vessels called Qvevri buried in the ground up to their necks. Georgian wine has been attracting the attention of wine lovers worldwide after the centuries-old technique was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2013.