Makigoya

Makigoya is already unusual as a brewery inside a winery, but the head brewer who joined in 2023, Tatsunari Kusano, is an interesting guy too.

Kusano was born in Kagoshima in 1995. While studying chemistry at a university in Saga, he worked part-time at a natural wine bar, where he fell in love with wine. He tried to go to Australia, but it didn't work out, so in 2019 he joined Cave d'Occi and started making wine. Around 2021, he was also put in charge of brewing beer.

That's exactly its hallmark. The 'CROIX' series launched in 2023 comes in 750 ml wine bottles and is designed to be enjoyed in Burgundy glasses. Take 'CROIX Albariño' for example: it's fermented with grape pomace from Cave d'Occi's own Albariño vineyard and wild yeasts that cling to the grape skins, then aged for nine months. It's basically beer sitting on the boundary between beer and wine.

And 'CROIX Élevage' is aged for six months in French oak barrels that had been used at Cave d'Occi to mature Sancerre-style white wine and eau de vie. It's 6.5% ABV with just 0.8 atmospheres of carbonation. You get oak and brandy aromas, bitter orange, even umami. The owner of a bottle shop in Kamakura reportedly encountered it on a trip back from Europe and raved about it.

Of course. The standard 'Pale Ale' uses New Zealand hops with a Sauvignon Blanc character, giving aromas of white grapes and lychee. The 'Sour Ale' has peach and apricot acidity. They're all designed to keep bitterness down, emphasize aroma, and pair with food.

'CROIX Micromonde 2023'! They blended one-year-old lambic from Belgium's Oud Beersel with Makigoya's sour ale and Mitsubachi 2023, then barrel-aged it. It's rare to see a Japanese seaside winery and Belgian tradition collide like that.