More than an urban vineyard: in Japan the wine produced from the vines of a railway station is born

Wine, far from the open country: no “heresy”, it is known that the natural habitat of the vine is nature, but given the modern urbanization, and the need to make cities greener, there are more and more urban vineyards, which are spaces that have been saved from cementing, such as the Royal Vineyard of Villa della Regina in Turin, the Vineyards of the Lagoon of Venice, the Vineyard of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, the Vineyards of Siena, the Vineyard of San Martino of Naples, the Pusterla Vineyard of Brescia, but also the “Clos Montmartre” Paris, and the urban vineyard of Vienna, or that are, as in this case, spaces cut out in the middle of the city, where the vineyard becomes part of the architecture of the city. We are talking about the “railway vineyard” in Shiojiri, Japan, planted in 1988, and which today will see, as we read in the British magazine The Drinks Business, bottled and sold its wine. Right at the train station of the city in the territory of Nagano, which hosts the wine regions of Chikumagawa, Kikyogahara, Nihon Alps and Tenryugawa, between tracks 3 and 4 of the station, vines were planted, grown on pergolas, to advertise the wine character of the region.
They have always been managed by railway staff and residents, but the grapes had never been turned into wine. In 2019, then, the turning point: to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the birth of the city of Shiojiri, the grape harvest was made to produce wine. The result is 100 exclusive bottles, produced in a local winery, which will be released on the market this month.