Drinking Wine In Tokyo

Alex Halberstadt on Japan’s natural wine scene, standing-room-only bars, and the new wave of domestic pours

- Alex Halberstadt

This past November, in Tokyo, I stood pressed against a bar with five grown men, in a barely lit space the size of a walk-in closet. When someone moved, the rest of us shifted like a single organism. Winestand Waltz, a “standing bar” in Ebisu, was a testament to the Japanese penchant for making the most of small spaces. It was hidden so expertly from passersby that my taxi driver had to interview a cook at the adjacent café before he found it.

After my eyes adjusted to the dark, I noticed the Jacques Tati posters, Le Creuset casseroles, and slim volumes of Symbolist poetry. Yasuhiro Ooyama, the bearded proprietor who’s known as the “wine professor,” poured me a cloudy pink brew that smelled like watermelon candy and wet poodle fur. He said it was bottled without added sulfur dioxide in a friend’s wine shop in Kyushu. I nursed it for a while and tried not to move. My sojourn through the art-house film that is the Tokyo wine scene was just beginning.