9 ms·

At Japan’s first winery, the country’s oldest grape lives on

109 points by karaokeyoga 3y ago

karaokeyoga 3y ago
https://archive.ph/CNbav https://archive.ph/CNbav
f6v 3y ago
> Carefully, the chief viticulture engineer of Iwanohara Vineyard, Japan’s oldest operating winery, inspects each of the 5,500 grape vines that make up Iwanohara’s six hectares in Kitagata, Niigata Prefecture. > So far, Wada has found three bugs after two hours of work. The midday sun beats down, and beads of sweat pool on his neck. Iwanohara focuses on using as few pesticides as possible, an approach that means Wada is using a handmade tool to dig out any insects he finds. Watching Drops of god on Apple TV I thought the way those wine nuts were portrayed was an exaggeration. Apparently, it wasn’t.
- sva_ 3y ago
  I recommend the documentary Sour Grapes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5728684/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5728684/
- asciimike 3y ago
  Drops of God is fun and educational, as is Bartender (https://mangakakalot.com/read-in2uo158504890455 https://mangakakalot.com/read-in2uo158504890455). I also enjoyed Oishinbo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oishinbo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oishinbo), though admittedly the non-food part of the plot gets a bit stale/one-uppey.
  - sithadmin 3y ago
    If you like Oishinbo, try Souta no Houcho (Sota's Knife). Bambino! and Bambino! Secondo are also decent.
hospitalJail 3y ago
Japan's obsession with tradition gives me real Europe vibes. The people selling it praise it, the people nearby have pride. I eat it and after all the hype, am disappointed. If I try really really hard, I can trick my brain into thinking its worthwhile. (I did just spend a bunch of money, traveled across the world, I should be able to enjoy this more than something I grow in my garden.. right?) I'd love blind taste tests with children(or adults if you deem them better).
- rcme 3y ago
  Children have horribly underdeveloped palates. Generally novices in anything, food or otherwise, have trouble appreciating the nuances that make something beautiful.
  - rbreaves 3y ago
    Could also just say different - children also have an unlimited tolerance for things that are sweet. Some adults I think never get past it much & have what I call super smellers too. But yea it’s like they can also lack the tastebuds that’d help them appreciate bitter things later in life, like most adults do. Could just be natural that our tastebuds from when were kids change or die off sorta, which allows for the fuller palate. Tbh though I can’t stand bitter & earwax level IPAs. Just gives me headaches.
    - DropInIn 3y ago
      Relevant link I had handy from writing my own reply https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/jan/29/changing-tastes-food-and-aging https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/ja...
  - taeric 3y ago
    Is it an irony that the very same nuance detection is often used in so many biases and other degenerate judgements? I have loved that my kids find basically everything beautiful. Beetles in the backyard? Amazing! Snakes? Cute! Coyotes? Leave the chickens alone, you adorable canine! Are they underdeveloped? I mean, yeah. I don't disagree with the assertion. I sometimes question the directions that we develop ourselves into, though.
MattGaiser 3y ago
I’m curious if handcrafting artisans like this exist in North America/Europe at anywhere near the same scale (and we only see stories from Japan as we view it as something their culture does) or whether this is a uniquely Japanese thing to do. Perhaps we just value it less here in North America. All stories of extremely small batch but precisely crafted products seem to come out of Japan.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Alex3917 3y ago
  > Perhaps we just value it less here in North America. The reason we have less stuff like this in the USA is due to geography. We are a mostly flat country, rather than being mountainous or separated onto different small islands. Because of this, products produced via economies of scale can outcompete higher-quality artisanal products.
  - swexbe 3y ago
    Except, shipping by boat has been more cost effective since the beginning of history. The furthest you can get from the ocean in Japan is like a full days walk.
    - gottorf 3y ago
      > shipping by boat has been more cost effective since the beginning of history I've read that before the Transcontinental Railroad, it was cheaper and faster to get to San Francisco from a port in China than from St. Louis.
      - badpun 3y ago
        Similarly, people who wanted to join the 1849 San Francisco gold rush, but were on the East Coast, took boats which sailed all the way around South America to reach SF the fastest.
    - 3y ago
phemartin 3y ago
[flagged]
- SonicSoul 3y ago
  original article has audio read by a human
- dang 3y ago
  Can you please stop posting these links? You're crossing into spamming.
  - phemartin 3y ago
    Hi dang! This article is behind a soft paywall, so I thought it would be helpful to the HN community.
    - dang 3y ago
      When it's your own project, and you keep linking to it in many unrelated threads, the assumption is going to be that you're doing it for promotion. (That's how it looked to me, at least, and I tend to be a lot more lenient about this than the median HN reader.) Not only that but it looks like your account has been using HN primarily to promote your own work (this project and others), which is something that the site guidelines explicitly ask users not to do: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html There's nothing wrong with sharing your work on HN—that's an important part of what the site is for! But it should be part of an unpredictable mix of topics. When people are only interested in their own stuff, that's not the kind of interest we're shooting for here—that's using HN as a promotional target and really not in the intended spirit of the site. As the guideline says, we want people to share in the spirit of curiosity, not promotion, and that would normally include a range of unrelated/interesting things, not just one's own.
      - 3y ago
atleastoptimal 3y ago
Japan's MO seems to be extreme attention to detail on labor intensive high end luxury products. This translated into good transfer learning towards industrialization after WW2 but now has stagnated its potential by focusing on optimizing local maxima. It's aims fail to see the forest for the trees.
- ehnto 3y ago
  Perhaps they aren't always trying to maximize growth. I think local focus is the secret sauce to the diversity of outputs and ability to sustain so many different niche interests.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    I agree with you and I think it's a cultural difference which is really hard for Americans to grasp because we're ultra-competitive, in your face, maximize, automate, dominate. Maybe we win in some sense but we don't enjoy the forest in the same way.
- jxramos 3y ago
  They're probably zening out on these new forms of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko-ry%C5%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko-ry%C5%AB in the tech space.

109 points by karaokeyoga 3y ago

https://archive.ph/CNbav https://archive.ph/CNbav

f6v 3y ago

> Carefully, the chief viticulture engineer of Iwanohara Vineyard, Japan’s oldest operating winery, inspects each of the 5,500 grape vines that make up Iwanohara’s six hectares in Kitagata, Niigata Prefecture. > So far, Wada has found three bugs after two hours of work. The midday sun beats down, and beads of sweat pool on his neck. Iwanohara focuses on using as few pesticides as possible, an approach that means Wada is using a handmade tool to dig out any insects he finds. Watching Drops of god on Apple TV I thought the way those wine nuts were portrayed was an exaggeration. Apparently, it wasn’t.

sva_ 3y ago
I recommend the documentary Sour Grapes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5728684/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5728684/
asciimike 3y ago
Drops of God is fun and educational, as is Bartender (https://mangakakalot.com/read-in2uo158504890455 https://mangakakalot.com/read-in2uo158504890455). I also enjoyed Oishinbo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oishinbo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oishinbo), though admittedly the non-food part of the plot gets a bit stale/one-uppey.
- sithadmin 3y ago
  If you like Oishinbo, try Souta no Houcho (Sota's Knife). Bambino! and Bambino! Secondo are also decent.

hospitalJail 3y ago

Japan's obsession with tradition gives me real Europe vibes. The people selling it praise it, the people nearby have pride. I eat it and after all the hype, am disappointed. If I try really really hard, I can trick my brain into thinking its worthwhile. (I did just spend a bunch of money, traveled across the world, I should be able to enjoy this more than something I grow in my garden.. right?) I'd love blind taste tests with children(or adults if you deem them better).

rcme 3y ago
Children have horribly underdeveloped palates. Generally novices in anything, food or otherwise, have trouble appreciating the nuances that make something beautiful.
- rbreaves 3y ago
  Could also just say different - children also have an unlimited tolerance for things that are sweet. Some adults I think never get past it much & have what I call super smellers too. But yea it’s like they can also lack the tastebuds that’d help them appreciate bitter things later in life, like most adults do. Could just be natural that our tastebuds from when were kids change or die off sorta, which allows for the fuller palate. Tbh though I can’t stand bitter & earwax level IPAs. Just gives me headaches.
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    Relevant link I had handy from writing my own reply https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/jan/29/changing-tastes-food-and-aging https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/ja...
- taeric 3y ago
  Is it an irony that the very same nuance detection is often used in so many biases and other degenerate judgements? I have loved that my kids find basically everything beautiful. Beetles in the backyard? Amazing! Snakes? Cute! Coyotes? Leave the chickens alone, you adorable canine! Are they underdeveloped? I mean, yeah. I don't disagree with the assertion. I sometimes question the directions that we develop ourselves into, though.

MattGaiser 3y ago

I’m curious if handcrafting artisans like this exist in North America/Europe at anywhere near the same scale (and we only see stories from Japan as we view it as something their culture does) or whether this is a uniquely Japanese thing to do. Perhaps we just value it less here in North America. All stories of extremely small batch but precisely crafted products seem to come out of Japan.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Alex3917 3y ago
> Perhaps we just value it less here in North America. The reason we have less stuff like this in the USA is due to geography. We are a mostly flat country, rather than being mountainous or separated onto different small islands. Because of this, products produced via economies of scale can outcompete higher-quality artisanal products.
- swexbe 3y ago
  Except, shipping by boat has been more cost effective since the beginning of history. The furthest you can get from the ocean in Japan is like a full days walk.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > shipping by boat has been more cost effective since the beginning of history I've read that before the Transcontinental Railroad, it was cheaper and faster to get to San Francisco from a port in China than from St. Louis.
    - badpun 3y ago
      Similarly, people who wanted to join the 1849 San Francisco gold rush, but were on the East Coast, took boats which sailed all the way around South America to reach SF the fastest.
  - 3y ago

phemartin 3y ago

[flagged]

SonicSoul 3y ago
original article has audio read by a human
dang 3y ago
Can you please stop posting these links? You're crossing into spamming.
- phemartin 3y ago
  Hi dang! This article is behind a soft paywall, so I thought it would be helpful to the HN community.
  - dang 3y ago
    When it's your own project, and you keep linking to it in many unrelated threads, the assumption is going to be that you're doing it for promotion. (That's how it looked to me, at least, and I tend to be a lot more lenient about this than the median HN reader.) Not only that but it looks like your account has been using HN primarily to promote your own work (this project and others), which is something that the site guidelines explicitly ask users not to do: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html There's nothing wrong with sharing your work on HN—that's an important part of what the site is for! But it should be part of an unpredictable mix of topics. When people are only interested in their own stuff, that's not the kind of interest we're shooting for here—that's using HN as a promotional target and really not in the intended spirit of the site. As the guideline says, we want people to share in the spirit of curiosity, not promotion, and that would normally include a range of unrelated/interesting things, not just one's own.
    - 3y ago

atleastoptimal 3y ago

Japan's MO seems to be extreme attention to detail on labor intensive high end luxury products. This translated into good transfer learning towards industrialization after WW2 but now has stagnated its potential by focusing on optimizing local maxima. It's aims fail to see the forest for the trees.

ehnto 3y ago
Perhaps they aren't always trying to maximize growth. I think local focus is the secret sauce to the diversity of outputs and ability to sustain so many different niche interests.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  I agree with you and I think it's a cultural difference which is really hard for Americans to grasp because we're ultra-competitive, in your face, maximize, automate, dominate. Maybe we win in some sense but we don't enjoy the forest in the same way.
jxramos 3y ago
They're probably zening out on these new forms of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko-ry%C5%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko-ry%C5%AB in the tech space.