Natsuko Kato, Chief Sommelier at YolRoppongi, Tokyo
Tokyo is a city where what you see from the street is only a tiny portion of the real city, this is the visible part of the iceberg, even if a nice piece of iceberg... Hidden
to the unsuspecting visitor, thousands of bars and restaurants are spread out in the city out of the public eye, in the high rises or in the basements. Roppongi is one of these neighborhoods with a high concentration of bars and night spots. Just think that this neighborhood has something like 30 wine bars...It is often considered as the expat district of choice in Tokyo, but the bar scene is so diverse there that you will easily find (in the immerged-part of the iceberg) authentic venues catering to the Japanese clientèle. The Yol Salon Bar is one of these place, this wine bar opened last year with a mostly Japanese clientèle and an impressive wine list in the brand-new
Midtown complex in Roppongi.
A few more things abour Roppongi : it is a hilly part of Tokyo, and while you can reach it by subway, it can also be reached by a pleasant walk from Omotesando. We did it once by an incredibly beautiful evening : It was cold, the snow was falling silently all over the city and the streets were nearly empty, but we had this beautiful view on the Oyama cemetery as we crossed it before climbing the stairs to reach Roppongi, Omotesando is on the left of the Cemetery and Roppongi on the right [
aerial view of the street through the cemetery]. The oyama cemetery is one of the most beautiful place in Tokyo to enjoy a cherry blossom viewing party. the cemetery is hilly, with lots of trees and reminds me the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. By the way if you navigate to the left of the aerial picture and enlarge it, you have a nice view of the famous glass-and-steel Prada building in Omotesando (the small square with a red patch inside it). The quality of the aerial pic is excellent and you could almost see the bags through the glass structure when you enlarge at the max... You can also see the Midtown complex on the right of the cemetery but there was still lots of landscaping work around it when the pic was shot.
8:30pm : the Wine Bar Begins to FillYol means "the road" in Turkish. This wine bar is owned by
Synchronicity Co. LTD, a company working in different business fields like communication, brand management, interior design and web design. Having realized the interior decoration of many bars and restaurants in Tokyo, they made the leap to owning and operating real bars and thus the Yol wine bar was opened in the middle of Roppongi, in the central Midtown building (East 2F). If you have the patience to navigate through the esoteric Flash animation, you'll see the many bars and restaurants that they designed. You can also have a glimpse of the wine bar through the very sophisticated
Yol website. It has an interesting, full-of-mystery music background and samely-inspiring images. The bar opened last april 2007 and was quickly considered as one of wine bars with the largest choice of wines, whiskies and cocktails. The bar, which has large windows on the outside, has a long, circular counter, plus a few private rooms. It opens at 7pm but really begins to fill up at about 8:30pm. It is open till 7 or 8am and gets a lot of additional clientèle by 2am, when the many night clubs and cabarets close. At these hours you will get a taste of the pulse of Tokyo and come across its late-night party-goers
Our Blind Tasting at Yol : Time to see the BottlesWe knew about the wine bar from a tip of our friend Haruko, a Japanese sommelier who lives in France. She had told us that this new wine bar was a top address in this Roppongi upscale Midtown building, and that she happened to know the chief sommelier who worked there, a young Japanese woman named Natsuko Kato. Originally from Nagasaki (Kyushu), her sommelier and wine education led her to work at such prestigious restaurants as l'Arpège (on the kitchen side), la Tour d'Argent and Ledoyen in Paris. She also worked at the Lavinia wine shop there and in the Miramar in Menton (on the French Riviera). She started to work at Yol in Tokyo on july 2007. She recently changed the wine-by-the-glass list, which usually lists 5 or 6 wines for each color. In february, it is more quiet so she has 4 wines for each color.
We had come to drink a glass but she had a surprise for us and proposed to begin with a blind tasting of three white wines. Welcome introduction...
__For the wine on the left, I had thought to a Sauvignon from New Zealand (the nose was very Sauvignon-like), it was actually a Mount Difficulty Pinot Gris 2007 from New Zealand. She aknowledged that the nose was misleading here.
__About the bottle in the middle, we had felt the wooded Chardonnay but couldn't name an origin even if I risked California : not far, it was a Woodward Canyon Chardonnay 2006 from Washington state. Nice wine, with, she says an elevage in French casks with the good drying and toasting ratio.
__The last wine, on the right was a hard guess for me at least : a very aromatic and pleasant wine, with lychee aromas. It was a Jaffurs Viognier 2005, from Santa Barbara County, California (see
Alder's Vinography page on the 2003).
"Kei Chan", the Cook at the Salon Bar YolAs you can see on this picture, many of the bottles at Yol are stored in a wine fridge/cellar, because even if the bar is air-conditioned, the precious wines need a careful storage. The wine-glass list when we visited had 4 whites plus 3 Champagnes (by Ruinard - sorry, I didn't note their cuvées and prices) : Torbreck Woodcutter's Semillon 2006, Australia at 1000 Yen (6,3 Euro or 9,3 USD), Mount Difficulty Wines Pinot Gris 2007 from New Zealand at 1300 Yen, Jaffurs Viognier 2005 from California at 1500 Yen and Woodward Canyon Chardonnay 2006 from Washington state's WallaWalla at 1700 Yen. The red wine list was a Marques de Piscal Tinto Reserva 2003 (Spain) at 1000 Yen, a Torii Mor Pinot Noir 2006 from Oregon (Willamette Valley) at 1300 Yen, a D'Arenberg "the Laughing Magpie" Shiraz Viognier 2006 (Australia) at 1400 Yen, and a Valentine Vineyards "Echo Valley Cabernet Sauvignon" 2002 from Mendocino, California at 1800 Yen. This wines-by-the-glass list should be widened in the spring. The bottle menu is huge, I will not try to detail it painstakingly, but you have there an incredible choice of wine from the New and the Old World. Just look at Champagne : 30 Champagnes are listed, among them Salon, Gosset, Krug, for a price tag from 8000 Yen (Mumm Cordon Rouge Brut) to 180 000 Yen (Dom Pérignon "Reserve de L'Abbaye" 1985. Just for the Champagne rosé, they have 7 labels.
But the bar has other much-sought-after drinks : its cocktails plus a very large selection of imported- and domestic whiskies, and Cognacs...
A Few Steps from Midtown Building : the Lights of RoppongiSalon Bar YolMidtown East 2F - B-0201 - 9-7-2Akasaka, Minato-kuTokyo 107 0052 JapanPhone : +81 (0)3 54137746Fax : +81 (0)3 5413 7747http://y-o-l.jp/(ghost website : the wine bar seems to have closed because its website is offline)
to the unsuspecting visitor, thousands of bars and restaurants are spread out in the city out of the public eye, in the high rises or in the basements. Roppongi is one of these neighborhoods with a high concentration of bars and night spots. Just think that this neighborhood has something like 30 wine bars...It is often considered as the expat district of choice in Tokyo, but the bar scene is so diverse there that you will easily find (in the immerged-part of the iceberg) authentic venues catering to the Japanese clientèle. The Yol Salon Bar is one of these place, this wine bar opened last year with a mostly Japanese clientèle and an impressive wine list in the brand-new Midtown complex in Roppongi. 
The design of this wine bar is very nice. The warm color palette creates an inviting atmosphere, and the curtains behind the bar create an intimate and soft feel. Thanks for the post.
Posted by: Sarah Robison | November 04, 2011 at 01:06 AM