Katsunuma Winery Aruga Branca 2024

Profile & Story

Katsunuma Winery (also known by its corporate name, Marufuji) was founded in 1937 in the town of Katsunuma, Koshu City, in Japan's Yamanashi Prefecture, when the founder began producing wine alongside the family's traditional sericulture business. In 1941 neighboring grape growers joined the enterprise to form a cooperative, and the company was incorporated as Katsunuma Brewing Co., Ltd. in 1954. The winery's guiding philosophy holds that good wine comes from quality grapes, and it emphasizes meticulous, largely hand-tended vineyard work with minimal fertilizer use. Katsunuma sits at the heart of Yamanashi's Koshu Valley, Japan's historic center of viticulture and home to the indigenous, pink-skinned Koshu grape, long used for delicate, food-friendly white wines. Katsunuma Winery built its reputation on Koshu, and its Aruga Branca line — its name drawing on the Portuguese word for white — is the estate's flagship range of Koshu-based whites, spanning dry single-vineyard bottlings, sparkling styles, and dessert wines. This bottling, labeled simply Aruga Branca 2024, continues that tradition as a Koshu-based white made in the estate's characteristic light, aromatic house style.