Developmentally Impaired Persons Working Together to Produce High Quality Wine in Japan

Copyright Coco Farm & Winery

At Coco Farm & Winery in Tajima Town, Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, Cocoromi Gakuen students with intellectual disabilities are working to produce wine. The farm originated with a vineyard reclaimed decades ago by junior high school students led by Noboru Kawada, then a teacher of an orthogenic class at a junior high school and later the founder of the Cocoromi Gakuen school and Coco Farm and Winery. It took two years, starting in 1950s, to clear the steep slopes to plant the grape vines.

The vineyards are on steep slopes, at an average gradient of 38 degrees, and provide optimum conditions for cultivating grape vines: they are drenched with sunlight and well drained. But it is impossible to use a tractor or other farming equipment here, as the slopes are too steep. All work is done by hand, including collecting cut pruned branches, delivering additional manure to the hilltop, pruning bunches to get mature grapes one-by-one, and harvesting grapes one-by-one, carrying harvested grapes to truck by basket. In keeping with Mr. Kawada's policies of environmentally farming, no chemical herbicides have ever been applied to the vineyard. Working in a natural setting helps the students to grow stronger and enjoy the blessings of nature while cultivating the grape vines.

The winery does not have the abundant resources of long-established foreign wineries. They cannot produce wine on a large scale as major wine manufactures do. But they have tanned, healthy farmers striving to work doggedly throughout the year under the sun. The wine they produce conveys the wishes of the workers to live a fulfilling life by producing good wine in cooperation with others, despite their disabilities.

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