As recently as the early '90s, consumers in Japan needed perseverance to track down good, affordable wines. Wine was still perceived as a special-occasion beverage, requiring the intervention of an expert in formal attire. Top Tokyo restaurant wine lists revealed an obsession with French trophy wines, and retail prices would often produce a cringe. Wine fans on budgets were limited mainly to mediocre, bulk-produced plonk -- unless they smuggled in their favorites from abroad in their carry-on luggage.
Such memories have been eclipsed by the proliferation of wine bars, wine shops, wine Web sites and wine schools in Japan. Between 1993 and 1998, Japan's per capita wine consumption more than tripled. Now the frenzied boom has subsided, as have some of its more foolish excesses (such as face lotions made from wine) and the slavish obedience to the notion that "serious" wine must be red. Yet throughout Japan's postbubble economic malaise, its wine market has remained one of the few remarkable spots of vibrance.
Economic constraints had a paradoxical benefit for the Japanese wine market: They bolstered its liberalization. The global wine boom and multiple disappointing vintages in France sent prices soaring for prestigious French classics when Japan's consumers could least afford them. Starting in the early '90s, value-conscious importers, retailers and restaurateurs were forced to look beyond Bordeaux and Burgundy to the New World -- as well as to less renowned wineries in Europe.