Where new producers are appearing
Data ／ Published 2026-08-27
Ranked by the number of producers listed, Yamanashi, Nagano and Hokkaido come out on top. But that count treats a producer founded a century ago and one licensed last year as the same single entry. Counting only the fruit-wine licences newly granted over the past decade or so, by prefecture, shows that those same three look quite different from one another.
- Nagano65
- Hokkaido53
- Yamanashi32
- Yamagata13
- Iwate13
- Aomori12
- Chiba9
- Fukushima9
- Akita8
- Fukuoka8
- Ibaraki8
- Tokyo8
Listed producers and new licences are different counts The table below sets the number of producers listed in each prefecture beside the number of fruit-wine licences newly granted there since 2014. The right-hand column is the second as a share of the first, which gives a rough sense of how new a prefecture's wineries are.
| Prefecture | Listed | Licences since 2014 | of which since 2021 | Share of listed (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nagano | 112 | 65 | 31 | 58 |
| Hokkaido | 90 | 53 | 31 | 59 |
| Yamanashi | 114 | 32 | 17 | 28 |
| Yamagata | 26 | 13 | 7 | 50 |
| Iwate | 19 | 13 | 5 | 68 |
| Aomori | 18 | 12 | 3 | 67 |
| Chiba | 13 | 9 | 7 | 69 |
| Fukushima | 13 | 9 | 3 | 69 |
| Akita | 11 | 8 | 7 | 73 |
| Fukuoka | 10 | 8 | 6 | 80 |
| Ibaraki | 15 | 8 | 4 | 53 |
| Tokyo | 11 | 8 | 3 | 73 |
| Hyogo | 10 | 7 | 6 | 70 |
| Miyagi | 10 | 7 | 2 | 70 |
| Hiroshima | 10 | 6 | 3 | 60 |
| Aichi | 8 | 5 | 3 | 63 |
| Okayama | 12 | 5 | 3 | 42 |
| Gunma | 8 | 4 | 4 | 50 |
| Gifu | 7 | 4 | 3 | 57 |
| Mie | 6 | 4 | 3 | 67 |
| Okinawa | 7 | 4 | 3 | 57 |
| Shimane | 7 | 4 | 1 | 57 |
| Kagoshima | 3 | 3 | 2 | 100 |
| Kanagawa | 7 | 3 | 2 | 43 |
| Kumamoto | 6 | 3 | 2 | 50 |
A low share means a prefecture with many long-established producers. A high share means either a prefecture where producers have multiplied over the past decade, or one that had few old producers to begin with. Prefectures that look alike by producer count can have quite different histories.
What is not counted The National Tax Agency list only covers licences newly granted from 2014 onward. Producers already making wine before then do not appear in these columns. So the licence count is not the total number of producers ever founded in a prefecture — it is **the number since the list begins**.
Rows categorised as transfers, incorporations, business transfers or inheritances are excluded, as are trial licences. None of them means production started that year.
The listed count has its own limits. It is what this site could confirm, not the total number of wineries in a prefecture. It has, however, been checked against the National Tax Agency's list, confirming that every licensed production site that is a winery is listed here.
Size of a prefecture does not explain the numbers The table is ordered by listed producers and new licences, not by area or population. Land where grapes ripen and conditions where someone can start a business are different things, and the second involves somewhere to build a cellar, access to farmland, and a route to market. None of that can be read off this table.
Our reading: reading a high share as momentum is only half right; the other half is that there were few old producers to begin with. The two produce the same figure here, and only the founding years of individual producers on a prefecture page can tell them apart. What the numbers describe is not a ranking but the age distribution of a prefecture's producers.
Sources for this page
- www.nta.go.jp 2026-08-27国税庁 酒類等の製造免許及び酒類の販売業免許の新規取得者一覧（全国）
- nihon-wine.vercel.app 2026-08-27免許の年別の推移
- nihon-wine.vercel.app 2026-08-27都道府県別の掲載数
- nihon-wine.vercel.app 2026-08-27都道府県から探す