We had the chance recently to meet François Dumas, who is possibly the first to have set up a wine-import business in Japan centered around French natural wines : his company Le Vin Nature is entirely centered on the distribution of (mostly French) natural wines. His story is passionating because more than business, his career is about passion and intuition moves. First, he is a trained architect in France, then he organized music shows in Japan and ended up setting up a wine import business...
François came to Japan first 1979, he was a trained architect and he came for a one-year study on traditional Japanese houses, from the far north to the Japanese south. Back in France in 1981 he worked for the newly independant radio network Radio Nova, this was the time the World-Music was very strong in France and the new freedom in the radio waves was very exciting. Then he went back to Japan and organized music shows there with African musicians as well as people like Gainsbourg, Charles Trenet, Jane Birkin, Marianne Faithful, Maceo Parker and others. Serge Gainsbourg was not known in Japan then and he has become sort of a cult singer since. When the techno-music era began, he decided to stop this job, leave the business to his associates and begin do something with wine, even though he remained the president of this concert business (Highlife international) until 2006. So, in 1997, he decided to explore another field and gather a list of organic and biodynamic wineries and import their wines here. There weren't any specialized import of natural wines here then, the wine lansdcape was almost limited to Bordeaux which he felt was boring. From the start he had the wines of Overnoy, Chateau Le Puy (before it turned organic and discovered how not to use SO2, he adds) and many others.



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