From Hiroshima to the Médoc, with €10,000 and a dream.

Osamu Uchida grew up in Hiroshima, splitting his time between his parents' grocery shop and the athletics track. Wine came later, while he was doing night deliveries in Tokyo and a German colleague started sharing bottles with him. The idea of making his own never left.

In 1999 he moved to France with €10,000 in his pocket. He visited more than 300 estates, from Bordeaux to the Rhône to Roussillon, then went back to school to study vine growing and winemaking. After a few years importing wine back in Japan, he returned in 2010 and bought vines in the Médoc, the region everyone told him to avoid.

He found his place anyway, partly through the local running club, where he trains alongside people from Pauillac's grand estates. Today he farms just under 3 hectares organically and biodynamically, with trees planted among the vines. Production is tiny. The wines are precise, elegant and full of bright fruit: the Médoc without the stiffness.