Japanese whisky and sake have had their global breakout moments. Why not Japanese wine?
That’s Paul Travers’ thinking. After a career running finance technology for MetLife and other major financial institutions, he launched Nippon Naturals, an unexpected retirement project that distributes Japanese wines in Vermont.
Since he started his niche biz in 2024, Travers, 63, has made wine from Japan a thing in the Green Mountain State. If you’ve been paying attention to the shelves at Wilder Wines, Salt & Bubbles Wine Bar and Market, or Cork Market or the by-the-glass lists at 10 Green Street, Hepcat and Neighborhood Noodle, you’ve seen that Japan has infiltrated Vermont’s beverage scene in a new way.
The 100 different cuvées from 11 producers in Travers’ portfolio are right on trend with growing interest in “low-intervention” wines made with organically farmed grapes and few or no additives. That’s the “natural” in Nippon Naturals, to use the hot, if hotly debated, industry term.
“Nippon” is a name for Japan — the more formal version of “Nihon,” which appears in kanji on the bottles Travers sells as part of a legal “Japan Wine” standard of identity. Less than 20 percent of wine produced in Japan meets that standard because the country’s industry is largely focused on making wine with fruit brought in from elsewhere, Travers said. Nippon Naturals, by contrast, works with small producers who grow their own grapes.
Travers has been to Japan more than 50 times in the past 42 years, including a four-month stint in college when he taught English to Japanese students. Working in financial services — with a parallel 11-year career as a U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer — he found “there was always a reason to go back,” he said.
His interest in wine was shaped by his daughter, Anna, who launched Lilith Vermont Wines while working with Deirdre Heekin and Caleb Barber at Domaine La Garagista in Barnard and West Addison. Anna recently moved to Montana, but she shared her knowledge of the distribution world with her dad and encouraged him to look beyond the wines he’d been drinking for most of his life.
“She tried her best, for the longest time, to break me of my devoted focus to one type of wine at a certain price point,” Paul said with a laugh.
Some of Nippon Naturals’ wines are made with widely known varieties, “noble grapes” such as pinot noir and Chardonnay, that are grown in Japan. Others use hybrid grapes, much like wines made in Vermont. Shine muscat, a hybrid unique to Japan, lends itself to fruity wines that are “a great summertime drink,” Travers said.
In Burlington, Wilder Wines owner Sipha Lam points curious customers to Coco Farm & Winery’s offerings as an entry point for Japanese wines that are terroir-driven and unique but “not too out there,” she said. Located in the Tochigi Prefecture, Coco Farm and its longtime director, Bruce Gutlove, have led the country’s natural wine movement. Gutlove now runs 10R Winery in Hokkaido, and many up-and-coming winemakers use his facilities to produce their wines.
Lam has sold wines sourced by Nippon Naturals “since the beginning,” she said, noting that Travers’ focus on small, organic producers “fits our ethos.”
He’s bringing in wines we’ve never seen or had the chance to try.
SIPHA LAM
“He’s bringing in wines we’ve never seen or had the chance to try, which is so important as our food and beverage scene in Vermont grows,” Lam said.
Nippon Naturals’ wines are “thoughtful, meticulous and beautiful,” she continued. They tend to be bright rather than full-bodied or tannic. Some lean downright tropical: Lam gets guava notes from Domaine Tetta’s refreshing Aki Queen rosé and especially likes it paired with Vietnamese food.
At Neighborhood Noodle in Manchester (see page 38), the bottle list exclusively features Japanese wines. Several, including the Aki Queen and Coco Farm’s Noumin Dry, are available by the glass.
“People shouldn’t be afraid of these wines,” co-owner Emily Shore said. “They are really cool, and they are approachable.”
Travers sat down with Seven Days to talk about encouraging drinkers to branch out while keeping things niche. These nontraditional wines aren’t for everybody, he acknowledged. But with customers and beverage pros who are “more adventuresome and interested in new experiences,” they’ve been a hit.
How do you convince people to give Japanese wine a shot rather than sticking to tried-and-true bottles or regions, like you used to?
That’s what most people do, in my experience. They go to the wine store, they navigate to what they liked at one point, and they just repeat. It’s like the shampoo bottle instructions, right?
It’s only a short 20, 30 years ago that Japanese whiskys came on the scene and were initially laughed at. Now, they’re some of the most expensive whiskys in the world. People need to keep an open mind and be prepared for flavors and experiences they may not have had.
I usually start by asking people what their preconceptions are. If you look across the spectrum of Japanese products — whether it’s service-oriented or electronics or whisky — it’s all manifesting the same output of the culture.
Are there overlaps between Japanese wine and Vermont wine?
The traditionalist and non-traditionalist categorization plays into [both]. Traditionalists are looking for cabernet sauvignon. They’re looking for pinot noir. They’re very set on “this is how wine should be.”
With the hybrids, whether they’re from Japan or Vermont, people don’t know what to expect. And I find that often, when people don’t know what to expect, rejection is an easy way for them to respond, just because they didn’t know how to process it.
Will you branch out to other regions?
I have about 20 customers, and I don’t really want to make this a larger operation. I feel that it’s almost like providing a service, where it’s not me necessarily looking to make my career on selling wine at this time in my life, but it’s more about me having a unique experience to be able to do this.
I do carry wine from Lebanon now. I don’t know if it’s that I’m becoming the land of misfit toys — or underrepresented wines — but a lot of these niche wines are not going to have supermarket appeal. Most distributors’ business models are built on much higher volume than we’ll see coming out of Japan. So people like me pick up the slack. ➆
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Japanese Juice | Three questions for Paul Travers of Nippon Naturals”
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
