19DYL AN + JENI
Japanese capital is its commitment to liv-
ery. The Ginza neighborhood has more
three-Michelin-star restaurants than Lon-
don, and some of the men posted outside
their doors resemble Prussian colo nels. At
Wadakura, a leather-and-glass grotto on the
top floor of the Palace Hotel, I took a table
beside an achingly young couple on a date
and a pair of Russian businessmen with
laptops. As in many upscale Japanese estab-
lishments, a tranquil vibe was enforced
by anodyne piano jazz. Chief sommelier
Keitaro Nishimura greeted me in white tie
and tails, carrying a bottle of Bollinger La
Grande Année Champagne 2005 in a pour-
ing cradle. There was a bronze grape cluster
on his vest. A three-hour, 12-course kai-
seki dinner with wine pairings would soon
follow. After filling my flute, he bowed and
handed me his business card, English side
up, using both hands in the Japa nese fash-
ion. Then he bowed again and sped away,
looking like someone about to conduct an
orchestra in 1953.I
f the fine-dining sommeliers
are the Fred Astaires of Tokyo’s
nightlife, the natural wine bar
proprietors are its Serge Gains-
bourgs. Yukiyasu Kaneko, lately
of Copenhagen’s Noma, was tell-
ing me about a mutual friend
who runs a wine bar in Brooklyn. His eyes
sparkled behind chunky plastic frames. The
natural wine scene has outposts from Cape-
town to Shanghai, and its denizens tend
to find one another abroad. We were at Le
Verre Volé in Meguro; with its chalkboard
menus and handwriting on the walls, the
cave à manger turned out to be a near replica
of the Paris original. Kaneko poured me the
2014 Tsugane chardonnay from Beau Pay-
sage in Yamanashi prefecture. It tasted like
an oxidative white from the Jura and paired
nicely with thin slices of mackerel and lotus
root wheels. Animal Collective blared on the
speakers, the natty young creatives downed
glass after glass of méthode ancestrale rosé,
and Kaneko began doing a compact rhumba
behind the bar with Sophia Burger, also
from Noma. After polishing off a plate of
smoked potatoes the size of hazelnuts swad-
dled in crème fraîche, tofu, and salmon roe,
I briefly considered dancing, too.
I was staying at Hoshinoya, a posh tradi-
tional inn shoehorned into an office tower.
At a subterranean private dining room, I
met Ayano Kawase, the only female som-melier I encountered in Tokyo. She told me
that many Japanese still associate wine
with Europe, and tend to frown on domestic
bottles, which are more in demand with for-
eigners. She offered me a white made from
koshu, Japan’s most popular indigenous
grape. Most of it is light and tastes a lit-
tle like muscadet, but the F.O.S. from Coco
Farm & Winery in Togichi, orange from skin
contact, tasted mellow and rich. Kawase
wore a garment that looked like a kimono
reimagined as a uniform in a science-fiction
movie. The koshu was served alongside a
glossy Fuji apple on a bare white plate. The
hollowed-out fruit was lifted to reveal a
savory apple tartlet decorated with chry-
santhemum petals. The long, impeccable
dinner that followed resembled something
dreamed up by Magritte.
After dinner I sat half-submerged in
warm saltwater on the hotel’s roof. My head
was swimming from the alcohol and sen-
sory overload. The onsen, or hot spring bath,
was open to the elements, letting in a cold
drizzle that played on the water’s steam-
ing surface and sobered me up. After I got
dressed, I went to look for Kawase. I real-
ized that what I really wanted was another
glass of champagne. Winestand Waltz,
a standing-room-only
natural wine bar in
the Ebisu neighbor-
hood of Tokyo.