Yamanashi grows a lot of grapes and has plenty of wineries. Mars Winery is one of them, and with so much free tasting on offer it’s worth dropping by.
The place
Lots of tour buses come through here too.
Mars wine
The logo looks great.
Today’s free tasting wines
There was quite a variety. But is it really okay to pour this much for free? I ended up buying a bottle myself anyway…
Koshu wine
Some of them are a bit pricey.
Inside
It’s pretty spacious.
All kinds of wine
Yamanashi wine raisin chocolate
Lots of things here that look like good snacks to go with wine.
Raisin kinako
Snacks
Better quality than I expected…
Wines
The free tasting is the cheap stuff; I imagine the expensive ones taste like something else entirely.
The history of Mars Whisky
Wines
Tasting
The grape juice is decent too. The grapes, though, turned out to be imported rather than from Yamanashi.
Grape highball
They have things like this too.
The expensive wines
Some bottles go for over 30,000 yen.
Wine beef potato chips, spotted here as well
Inside
You can see the free tasting corner at the back.
Anyway… most of the wines I tried were sweet, perfectly drinkable but nothing spectacular. Then again, it’s a free tasting, so I shouldn’t expect too much.
Mars Winery
There’s a bus.
Factory tour, Mars wine
It would have been nice to check this out too, but…
This looked like a restaurant…
I didn’t have time to see everything…
Yamanashi village scenery
It looks roughly like this.
Snacks from Lawson
Stopped in on the way, and Lawson has been looking pretty good lately.
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