Vine trellises cover the whole hillside. Katsunuma calls itself the birthplace of Japanese wine, and the claim has some history behind it. In the early Meiji years two young men sailed to France, learned the craft of fermentation, and carried it back to this valley—and from that the vineyards of Katsunuma began. The signature grape, koshu, makes a pale golden wine, light enough to sit beside Japanese food. In October the town holds a festival to mark the harvest. The wine tasting is free, local grapes are handed out by the bunch, and the whole valley turns out to celebrate the year's pressing. There is one event called the river of wine, where red is poured from a great barrel into a wooden gutter and you scoop it up in a cup as it runs past your feet. It is not dignified. That is rather the point. From the top of the slope the whole Kofu basin opens out below, ringed by mountains, and you stand there on an autumn afternoon with the smell of grapes and a little wine in you, and the year feels, briefly, like it has been brought in safely.