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Our story today takes us way, way back into ancient history, but we start with writer Hannah

Kirschner drinking alone at her kitchen table in Japan.

So I've got a convenience store frozen pizza that I warmed up in the toaster oven and

I've opened a bottle of Japanese wine.

There's some amazing wine here now, by the way.

This one is from Domain Yui in Hokkaido, Japan's most northern island.

It's a lightly sparkling wine that uses an indigenous grape called Koshu.

The wine tastes like Welch's grape juice.

I guess that's because it's blended with Niagara grapes.

The same one's in that white grape juice, but it reminds me also of Anzu or Apricot.

It's really tart, so it cuts right through the grease of this processed cheese and it

balances the sweet tomato sauce.

It's a perfect fit for Yoshoku, Japanese interpretations of so-called Western food.

For a while now, I've been obsessed with finding out what is Japanese wine, and it's taken

me down some unexpected paths.

I wrote about the secret history of Japanese wine for food and wine magazine, but there

are still some questions I'm trying to answer.

It's a really great article, Hannah, and there's a line in the story that stood out to

me where you talk about how you've been working at a sake brewery in Japan, but that

at some point, and I quote, my thoughts turn from sake to an even more ancient beverage

...