The wineries stand in the middle of the vineyards. Katsunuma spreads across an alluvial fan, with vine trellises covering the slope and the wineries distributed among them rather than gathered in a town. The reason is time: harvested grapes need to be pressed as soon as possible, and the shorter the journey from the row to the press, the better the condition of the fruit when it arrives.

During the harvest the stages from delivery through to pressing can be watched, and several of the wineries also open their barrel cellars to visitors at other times of year. The slope drains well and receives light consistently across the day, so the landform itself — a fan of gravel laid down by a river — turns out to suit the crop, which is why the industry settled here rather than somewhere more convenient. The Chūō line and the expressway put Shinjuku about ninety minutes away, and properties here sometimes come with agricultural land attached.

Grapes lose value with every hour after picking. That single fact is why the wineries were built out among the vines instead of in the town, and it has produced a landscape that mixes agriculture and manufacturing more thoroughly than most producing districts do. On the hill above there is a facility with a view over the whole fan. From there the relationship between the fields and the buildings becomes legible at a glance: every winery is sitting inside its own supply, which is not how most food industries are laid out and is the whole reason this one looks the way it does.