When Daisuke Suzaki visited one of the legends of Japan’s wine world, Akihito Kido, with an impassioned appeal for help with his winemaking dreams, he was initially greeted with bafflement.
A winery in Toyota? Home to the headquarters of Japan’s biggest automaker — adjacent to Nagoya, the nation’s fourth-biggest city?
As a fellow native son of Toyota, Kido (of the eponymous Kido Winery in Nagano) was sympathetic to Suzaki’s ambitions. But with firsthand knowledge of the scorching heat that afflicts the city, he also thought his visitor “a little odd.”