Niki Hills Winery — Attraction in Niki

We stroll in on a Monday, looking forward to what i thot was a gastronomic lunch and having a great time like what everyone has been saying here….. well, be prepared to be ignored. We did not do a tour since we visited many vineyards before. we waved to a gentleman (same moustache guy in some of the photos) who was busy with a group of korean tourists, he acknowledged and proceeded to IGNORE us even though there was another service staff there. only after i use the rest room then it became plainly obvious they can’t ignore us, they came n take our order. there was NO lunch. the menu u see posted in the review is just small cold cuts and cheese. see the wine i posted here, i am no sommelier but i drank enough wine to tell you the pinot noir is BAD. colour is cloudy. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. i had more fun at Otaru wine gallery and no, I am no blogger and what’s not. Niki hills is not as pretty as some vineyards that i visited outside japan. tourist trap, probably many reviews here are...

A disappointing lunch experience overall. Had both fish and beef plates. The quality of food was okay to a fine level: fish (pan-seared flounder)was cooked perfectly but the butter sauce lacked depth. Beef was also cooked fine which was served with simple yet tasty juice. The biggest let-down was the fact that waiter person’s knowledge of food was close to nothing: they could not explain what they were serving and they didn’t not say anything unless asked. The lowest point of the lunch was the French baguette (see the picture). It was as if it came from a supermarket and came with some sort of poor quality butter made in Osaka, not Hokkaido butter!! For what they claim to be, their attention to detail to eating experience is very limited. Worth going all the way from Otaru/Sapporo? Absolutely not. BTW, no farewell at the time of departing. It summed up the whole experience of Niki Hill...

There are many wineries in Niki area. We decided to visit Niki Hills Winery in our trip in view of the beautiful scenery and lunch at restaurant Apercu, that totally didn’t disappoint us!

We booked winery tour at first but we were late because of some bad traffics, we then asked about the cart tour around vineyards and the staff quickly arranged for us. We saw different types of grapes in vineyard, forests and garden, amazed by how’s the ecosystem working here.

We’d also like to thank Sekizawa-san guiding us the tour, he is so passionate sharing us the things around and trying his best to translate into English for our understanding.

Lunch at Apercu is amazing! We love how the local ingredients are being presented, the creativity and how artistic the chef is! Decent setting and services and we bought bottles of wine with us. Surely we will come...