Squeezing grapes for wine the time-honored way, in wooden presses

In the countryside of Katsunuma, Yamanashi Prefecture, just north of Mt. Fuji, a family-run operation has been making wine the old-fashioned way for almost a hundred years: squeezing grapes by hand inside wooden presses.Every year in mid-October, Hitoshi Mitsumori, 54, along with his wife Kaori, 53 and son, Motofumi, 27, get together with other local farmers to process freshly harvested Koshu white wine grapes, a variety indigenous to the prefecture.Over the course of about three days, farmers from the Hishiyama district haul in about 13 tons of Koshu grapes, which after being fermented on …READ FULL ARTICLE