【Part 2】Hot Springs and Wine: A Stay-at-the-Winery Experience at Domaine de Yunohara

After a morning soak wakes up the body, breakfast at the ryokan is a Japanese set meal prepared with ingredients from Shinshu. As with dinner the night before, it is served in a private dining room.
The rice is especially good, though you can also start with a bowl of rice porridge.
A thoughtful option for anyone who may have enjoyed a little too much wine the night before.

The next morning, after enjoying the hot spring and taking our time over breakfast, we were free to relax in the lounge or on the terrace with wines from Shinshu. You can soak your feet in the footbath, or browse for a bottle to take home. The wall-to-wall wine corner is quite a sight. Alongside the Domaine de Yunohara wines I had enjoyed the previous evening, there is a broad selection of other Shinshu wines as well.

At check-in, each guest receives three wine coins. Insert one into the wine server and you can pour a glass of your choice — one coin per glass. If you do not drink wine, coffee is also available as an alternative.

And thanks to President Hanaoka, anyone who says, “I saw this on NIHON WINE.JP!” receives one extra coin — in other words, one more glass of wine. (Offer valid through the end of May 2026.)

After checking out, I recommend lunch at the galette café on the second floor of the winery. Set in a relocated traditional house with a nostalgic atmosphere, the café serves galettes made thoroughly with local ingredients, including buckwheat flour from Shinshu and locally produced eggs known as Noni Tamago. Naturally, the drink to pair with them is cider made at Domaine de Yunohara. Made from apples grown in Matsumoto, the cider has fine bubbles and a natural fruit character, and is available in both dry and sweet styles. Galette and cider is a classic pairing straight out of Brittany in France — and here, where both buckwheat and apples are so good, it feels particularly indulgent. On a fine day, enjoying cider on the terrace with the breeze from the Yamabe hills is lovely too.

The café is also open to visitors who are not staying at the ryokan. It is an easy recommendation for lunch or after a winery tour.

Cave à vin de Yunohara https://shop.oiwakeya.com/pages/cave-a-vin-de-yunohara

What makes this winery distinctive is that “the place where the wine is made and the place where it is drunk are one and the same.” Winemaker Kento Yoshida told me, “What makes me happy is being able to see the actual moment when guests drink the wine.” That closeness is meaningful for us as visitors too. We can hear directly from the people who make the wine, then taste it right there, with ingredients from the same place. It creates a warm experience that stays with you.

There is the learning that comes from visiting the winery, food that lets you experience local production and consumption first-hand, the restorative pleasure of the hot springs, and the easy enjoyment of galettes and cider that brings Brittany to mind. Around three hours by limited-express train and bus, just one night and two days — yet so many elements connect naturally into one rich journey. It feels like a distinctly grown-up kind of luxury.

“Hot springs,” “food,” “wine,” “vineyards,” and “place.” Perhaps experiencing all of these as one continuous flow — and feeling the warmth that connects them — is precisely what it means to experience terroir naturally. A one-night, two-day adults’ journey of hot springs and wine: perhaps it is time to make the trip yourself.

Kento Yoshida, Head Winemaker, Domaine de Yunohara

Information is current as of our visit in March 2026. For details and reservations, please contact the ryokan or winery directly.

Oiwakeya Ryokan website
https://www.oiwakeya.com/

Domaine de Yunohara
https://shop.oiwakeya.com/?srsltid=AfmBOopZMIX4Dx6cRdXeealwuG8NNNBZqY-EyfT_EX80IHxENqJ8tRXC

【Part 1】Hot Springs and Wine: A Stay-at-the-Winery Experience at Domaine de Yunohara

https://nihonwine.jp/winerys-voice/interview/domainedeyunohara202603/

Where to buy Domaine de Yunohara wine and cider

https://craftwineshop.com/collections/yunohara

After checking out of Oiwakeya Ryokan, I headed to:

▶️ Soba Ko in the Karasawa soba village of Yamagata, a community whose soba tradition dates back to the Edo period, for a Shinshu soba lunch.

▶️ The local supermarket Tsuruya, where I went all in on souvenirs: Tsuruya-exclusive Maruyama Coffee, Nozawana furikake, wasabi dressing, and more.

▶️ Ishii Miso, a Shinshu miso brewery founded in 1868, where I sampled miso soup and bought some excellent miso.

▶️ Visits to Oike Winery and Château Mercian Kikyogahara Winery.

Nagano has plenty of well-known sightseeing spots, from Matsumoto Castle to museums, but this time I shaped the trip around a different theme: “a journey to experience terroir.”