Spotlight - Grape Republic
Connection
We’ve been making a few beers in our KBC2.0 mini-series where the aim has been to get better acquainted with New Zealand hops.
We began with Peacharine, a hop varietal exclusive to Freestyle hops known for its stone-fruit (mainly peach) characteristics. We then moved to Motueka, a hop known for its lime-like character when harvested relatively early on and super dank and tropical when harvested late. Rounding out the series for 2024, we are now focusing squarely on Nelson Sauvin.
Nelson Sauvin’s name is derived from the Sauvignon Blanc wine grape to which many people agree has a similar flavour and aroma. The hop was invented in the early 2000s and due to its wine grape characteristics, was shunned by the big breweries but was readily embraced by craft breweries.
With our first beer in the Nelson Sauvin series, we wanted to showcase the hop on its own and how it could interplay with our Belgian yeast. For our 2nd and 3rd beer in the series, we wanted to work with a Japan-based vineyard: cue Grape Republic.
When I (Paul) was getting ready for the trip out to New Zealand, I learned that Kindeli wines, a famous non-interventionist winery actually resided across a hillside overlooking Freestyle.
Non-interventionist wines are different than wines you can normally buy at the supermarket or produced at super large scale in that they are unfiltered and have zero sugars (to increase fermentation), sulphur (to arrest fermentation) and additives (to prolong shelf life). The idea is that the wine you are drinking are truly of the ‘terroir’ from which the grapes came from.
Kindeli wines are the product of Alex Craighead and I learned that Grape Republic, a winery based out of Yamagata, wanted to follow in Alex’s footsteps of producing similar wines in Japan.
As such, when James asked if it was possible to source grapes and grape skins from somewhere, I immediately thought of Grape Republic and we reached out to them.
About Grape Republic
Grape Republic is situated on the hills surrounding Nanyo city in Yamagata Prefecture in Northern Japan.
It was founded by Tokyo-based restauranteur and sommelier Kazuomi Fujimaki, who in 2015 decided to move up to Yamagata.
He decided to set 3 simple rules for the company:
- The grapes being used must be organic (no pesticides)
- The wines must be made without sulfur and other additives
- The wines must use grapes grown locally in Yamagata
Embodying this 3-rule philosophy was Haruyuki Yano, the lead winemaker and director who would join 3 years later. Haruyuki originally hails from Kobe. He originally worked in an Italian restaurant in the city and got his certification as a sommelier. Off the back of that, he decided to further deepen his knowledge of grape cultivation and vinting wine and visited Italy, Australia and lastly New Zealand where he studied under Alex from Kindeli.
Essentially, via New Zealand, KBC got to know Grape Republic (ie. came full circle back to Japan)
The Plan
Beyond the Belgian Pale Ale, the idea was to make 2 additional beers that featured Nelson Sauvin but had the addition of pressed grape juice + grape must.
Given that Grape Republic uses locally grown grapes, we settled on Steuben grapes for one beer and Delaware grapes for the other.
Straight after harvest, they pressed the juice for us but made sure to leave a little juice in the skin (ie. must) so that when we added the must to the boil, we could more easily extract some of the tannins that we wanted from the grape skins so that when the beer fermented, we’d still be left with some nice residual grape character.
We’re quite pleased with the results of all 3 beers in this series and looking forward to getting them into your hands.
We hope that in the future, we can work with Grape Republic once more.
