Japanese Wine Co. Featured on Arigato Travel

Introduction

I have something exciting I want to share with you. Our good friends and long-time partner at Arigato Travel featured Japanese Wine Co. on their blog!

Kristian-san from their marketing team interviewed me about how the wine shop started, our two wineries, food pairing and more. You can read the whole thing here, Introducing Japanese Wine Co.: An Interview with Founder Kei Nishida.

Our interview on the Arigato Travel blog, September 23, 2026

And I have a confession. I almost missed it!

The article went live on September 23, and Kristian-san emailed me a few days later to let me know. Somehow that email slipped right past me.

When he kindly wrote again two weeks later, my reply started with "OMG. Wow." followed by "I am very, very sorry!!!"

So, Kristian-san, if you are reading this, thank you so much for your patience!

Our Good Friends at Arigato Travel

Many of you might know them as Arigato Japan. They have been taking travelers around Japan on English-speaking food and culture tours for ten years now, and they've been featured by the New York Times Travel Show, CNN Travel and Forbes.

And we are so lucky to call them friends.

We have been working together for a very long time, and one of the memorable moments goes back to the COVID days, when nobody could travel to Japan. I joined one of their virtual tea tours online, hosted by Lauren-san (Lauren Shannon, Partner and General Manager), and I enjoyed it so much.

Since then, Lauren-san hosted a Virtual Hanami (花見, cherry blossom viewing) for our tea community, walking through Yanaka in Tokyo. We've done giveaways together. And we keep sending tea lovers to their tours, like the one in Uji, Kyoto.

Cherry blossom season in Tokyo

Lauren-san is also the one who planted the "idea seed" for our Japanese chai a couple of years ago. It's finally getting made!

Lauren-san, thank you for always being at the frontline for us.

How This Interview Happened

This summer, right before we announced Japanese Wine Co., I emailed Lauren-san, Jess-san and Anne-san at Arigato. I wanted them to hear it from us first.

Lauren-san wrote back "WOW that is wonderful news!"

Then she told me something that made me so happy. She loves Grace Wine, and Arigato even runs a wine tour in Yamanashi (山梨), where Grace is made.

The Grace Wine winery in Katsunuma, Yamanashi

What a small world! (^^)

She also wanted to feature us on their blog.

So nice of them!

What We Talked About

I won't repeat the whole interview here. Please go read it on their blog! Just to give you a taste, here are a few things Kristian-san and I talked about:

• How Japanese Wine Co. started as Miki's dream, after a bottle of Bordeaux in France
• How Michelle Kazumi Sakazaki of Kazumi Wines opened the first door for us, and then introduced us to Grace Wine
• What Grace Koshu and Kazumi Napa Valley Koshu taste like side by side (hint: one is a quiet Sunday afternoon, the other just had a cup of coffee)
• Why I never call Kazumi's Cabernet a Japanese wine, even though it sits right next to Grace's Akeno in our Japanese Heritage Red Set
• Our favorite Japanese food pairings, starting with yellowtail sashimi with sudachi and a pinch of sea salt
• And why we can only ship to California and Washington DC for now

Read the full interview on Arigato Travel

Yellowtail sashimi with sudachi and a pinch of sea salt, one of the pairings in the interview

And if you want the story of the Koshu grape itself, it's all in Everything You Need to Know About Koshu Wine.

Visiting Yamanashi

If the interview makes you want to see where Koshu grows, please check out Arigato's Wine Country Day Trip from Tokyo.

Koshu vineyards in Yamanashi

From their page, it leaves from Shibuya Station and includes tastings at two wineries, a wine-pairing lunch and an English-speaking guide. And one thing I really appreciate. Arigato keeps the exact stops a surprise on purpose. As Jess-san explained to me, part of the fun is the discovery, and the rest is the stories and local connections a good guide brings.

I haven't been on it myself yet. (I want to go!!)

If a friend asked me how to see Japanese wine country without renting a car, this is where I'd send them.

Quick Reference

Interview	Introducing Japanese Wine Co.: An Interview with Founder Kei Nishida
Published	September 23, 2026, on the Arigato Travel blog
Interviewer	Kristian Robinson
Wines discussed	Grace Koshu, Akeno, Kazumi Napa Valley Koshu, Kazumi Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
Ships to	California and Washington DC
Wine tour in Japan	Wine Country Day Trip from Tokyo, by Arigato Travel

Conclusion

Kristian-san, Lauren-san, Jess-san, Anne-san and everyone at Arigato Travel, thank you so, so much!

We are so lucky to have friends like you, and so honored to be on your blog.

Any questions about Japanese wine, or about anything we carry, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We love talking about this stuff.

Thanks for reading. And arigato gozaimasu, Arigato Travel! (Yes, I had to.)