Each year, Coco Farm and Winery hosts its beloved Harvest Festival, where guests can enjoy the winery’s carefully crafted wines while soaking in live music. GAJET is hosting a meetup at the event on the 17th so you can hang out with other ALTs and celebrate the season’s bounty as we roll into winter. Signups are open until November 14th and are done through their website.
Parking is limited and requires reservations, so the best way to get there is to use public transport, including shuttle busses from either JR Ashikaga Station (JR Ryomo Line) or Tobu Ashikaga-shi Station (Tobu Isesaki Line). The shuttle bus is ¥1,500 for a round trip with the final return bus at 16:30. If you’d like to stretch your legs, it’s about an hour’s walk from the station to the winery.
This year’s live entertainment includes Shuhei Takezawa (violoncellist), Saigenji (guitarist), Iwao Furusawa (violinist), Akira Sakata (saxophonist) and more.
Coco Farm and Winery was founded in 1958 as a project by a local junior high school. The students and teachers created a space where people with intellectual disabilities could demonstrate and learn skills. In 1969 the project was expanded with the creation of Kokoromi Gakuen near the winery, to support adults living with learning disabilities.
Since then, the winery has provided wine to toast the 2020 G8 meeting in Okinawa, the Kyushu-Okinawa Summit, a welcome dinner for British Prime Minister Theresa May, and a luncheon at the Apostolic Nunciature.
They now operate five vineyards across Tochigi with additional partnerships across Japan, proud to be creating wine made with 100% Japanese grapes.