Another Sake Email! - exciting arrivals from Yoigokochi Imports

5/10/20 -

It's quite strange (and somewhat funny) to see the term "natural wine" becoming such a strong marketing slogan, even for products that are not related to wine at all. The appropriation of the term has far exceeded the tenets it once proposed, and has almost become a term for hipness, the new cool, and what looks good on Instagram or other social media platforms. It feels quite strange to hear statements like "oh, this mezcal is like the natural wine of agave spirits." I've written a little about this in regards to sake a few months ago (you can find the article here) so I don't want to repeat myself too much. Yet it felt apt to remark on certain trends in the market before introducing a new selection from Yoigokochi Imports, which currently feels like it's being sold as "the natural wine of sake", but is also a very interesting portfolio of quite delicious and unique sake from breweries that are putting a major effort into farming rice organically and definitely forging their own path in the modern market.

And so a short introduction:

The structures, and indeed politics of rice farming in Japan can be somewhat complicated. In the post-WWII years, when Japan was still reeling from the devastation of the conflict and facing severe food shortages, the Japanese government began to oversee all rice production. The purpose was two-fold. One was to control supply, and then later to control excess supply; there are still government subsidies in place to pay farmers to not grow rice, or not grow as much. This allows for a steady supply, at a price that wouldn't fluctuate much, and prevents the boom-bust cycles that are occasionally seen in other crops used for alcoholic production (agave used for Tequila in the Mexican state of Jalisco is a prime example), and allows farmers to sustain their livelihoods without the threat of economic uncertainty. The second reason has to do with preventing the reconsolidation of farmland in the hands of powerful landowners. Anyone familiar with the golden age of Japanese cinema (the works of Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, etc) is familiar with not only the epic samurai sagas, but also the atrocious working and living conditions of farmers in medeival Japan. The current system, with many small farmers banded together in regional cooperatives, is a protection against any one person having a big influence over an agricultural staple such as rice. For sake breweries, that meant that up until about 20 years ago, the only way to buy rice was to go through these cooperatives, with the Japanese government acting as a broker, as well as a regulatory body that decided not just yields and quanitites, but also classified the quality of rice, and what is could be used for.

These days those regulations have eased, and that's where Terada Honke and Akishika (along with other breweries you can often find on our shelves: Marumoto, with their label Chikurin, Mutemuka, Izumibashi) come in. These breweries have decided to put an emphasis on farming their own rice (or working closely with local farmers), and farming it organically, which in a humid country like Japan, is no small feat.

Akishika Shuzo was founded in 1886 in Osaka prefecture, and Hiraoki Oku, the sixth generation owner, has put a huge emphasis on farming organically, and in 2011 was able to obtain certification. Along with their own rice paddies, they also work with 20 other farmers who do not spray pesticides or herbicides. Akishika grows Yamadanishiki and Omachi, two of the most famous varieties, but they craft sake that feels singular, at once intense and maybe somewhat austere, yet full of complexities.

Terada Honke, founded in 1673, focuses on the kimoto method, a longer start to the fermentation process where the mash is allowed to interact with ambient lactic acid bacteria and yeast before alcoholic fermentation commences. A true outlier, Terada Honke is one of the very, very few breweries that allow ambient yeast to totally complete the fermentation and do not rely at all on commercial strains. They are also the only brewery that I have ever heard of that propagate their own kojikin, the spores of aspergillus oryzae that facilitate the saccharification process, converting the starch in rice into a fermentable sugar. Terada Honke farm 2 hectares of rice themselves, and rely on the help of 10 other local farmers, all of who are working in strict organic principles, utilizing processes such as rice duck farming (with ducks released in the paddies to eat the weeds and pests), and non-tilling farming, a philosophy familiar to anyone who has read Masanobu Fukuoka's "One-Straw Revolution", whose influence reaches far beyond Japan.

We're thrilled to present a new selection of sake from these two esteemed breweries. Just as a side note, all of these are bottled as muroka nama genshu (un-charcoal filtered, unpasteurized, undiluted) and so should be stored in a cool dark place before consumption. Oskar Kostecki