We got up early, ate breakfast in the hotel and then ate our free cake in the café there. The hotel is a Chateraise Hotel, Chateraise is a famous cake shop in Japan, as well as, it turns out, a hotel chain, so we got a free cake out of our stay. We also went to the public hot-spring in the hotel and were pleasantly surprised by how large and nice it was.
We left the hotel and took the free shuttle-bus back to Isawa-Onsen. I wanted to go to one more place, before drinking from the wine machines in the station tourist information center, so we left our bags in the station and took the train to Enzan.
There's an old building right next to the station, so we went there and found its closed in Tuesdays, and it was Tuesday, so we went back to the station dejected. I checked my phone and found a winery not far away and as luck would have it, a bus was at the station which was going in the right direction.
We got of the bus and took a short stroll to Kai Winery, south of the station. There were only four wines on offer to sample, but the woman who was pouring them for us was not good at it and always overdid it, so we got a very satisfactory amount of wine out of it. The wine was good too, so obviously we bought another bottle of white and then went back to the station.
After the train had finally bought us back to Isawa-onsen, we headed for the wine machines. We drank all the different wines that were available. You can chose from 20ml, 30ml, or 50 ml samples, you put your money in and then press the button and out comes the wine into your plastic cup.
Quite a few different people came in and were trying one or two wines while waiting for their trains to come. I really liked it there as they weren't trying to sell wines, there were no bottles available to buy, they were just trying to get people interested in the area. So there was no pressure to buy anything.
After the two wine drinking sessions, we took the train to Kofu, ate lunch, bought some souvenirs, some wine and snacks for the journey home and caught the train, very happy and content with our wine tour.
As the wine area is only an hour and a half from Tokyo by train, its a convenient and very interesting place to learn about Japanese wines and to learn how much wine a human body can safely take over an extended period. Definitely recommended!
