In the countryside of Katsunuma, Yamanashi Prefecture, just north of Mount Fuji, a family-run operation has been making wine the old-fashioned way for almost 100 years: squeezing grapes by hand inside wooden presses.
Every year in mid-October, Hitoshi Mitsumori, 54, along with his wife Kaori, 53, and son, Motofumi, 27, get together with other local farmers to process freshly harvested Koshu white wine grapes, a variety indigenous to the prefecture.
Over the course of about three days, farmers from the Hishiyama district — one of Japan's most famous areas for growing fruit — haul in about 13 tons of Koshu grapes which, after being fermented on site, are returned to their owners the following spring as budōshu (grape alcohol).