A Winery in the Snow Country

[Hiroyuki]

I live in one of the snowiest regions in the world, which is often called the Snow Country, with three meters (ten feet) of snow falling each winter. There is a winery in this snowy region, Echigo Winery. It looks just like any other in appearance, but it has a yuki himuro (literally, snow icehouse; let me simply call it a snow house), which is capable of holding 250 tons of snow to keep the storage tanks at about 5 degrees C (41 degrees F) all year round

http://www3.ocn.ne.jp/~ewine75/newpage.html

The photo on the left shows how snow is accumulated in the snow house; part of the roofs is movable so that snow can get in. The photo on the right shows the snow in the snow house in mid-October. You can see a considerable amount of snow still remaining in the house.

What is fascinating about the cold storage system using the snow house is that it emits little carbon dioxide.

Vineyard in four seasons:

http://www3.ocn.ne.jp/~ewine75/sub2.html

Inside the winery (5th and 6th photos show the snow house)

http://www3.ocn.ne.jp/~ewine75/sub3.html

Home page of Echigo Winery (Japanese only)

http://www3.ocn.ne.jp/~ewine75/index.html

Do you know of any winery that has a similar system?

[Brad Ballinger]

It certainly is an ingenious approach. I live in Minnesota in the U.S., where we get about 5 feet of snow every winter. We have wineries here, but they have more modern cellaring techniques. They do bury the vines in sand, though, to keep them from freezing to the point of death.

[Hiroyuki]

They do bury the vines in sand, though, to keep them from freezing to the point of death.

I made an inquiry to the winery about this issue. Here's a rough translation of their reply:

In this snowy district called Uonuma, a great deal of snow falls in the winter, so that the grape trees are under the snow in the wintertime. Because of this, however, the temperature will not go below 0 degrees C (32 deg. F) under the snow, so the land surface will not freeze, nor do the grape trees freeze to death. Snow also protects them from frost damage.

We at this winery plant grape trees at an angle so that they will not break under the weight of the snow. Besides, we use (vertical) fences, which are resistant to snow, not (horizontal) trellises.