sake master blog
Last Monday, I finally got to visit Australia’s only sake brewery called GO-SHU, located about 50kms west of Sydney, NSW.
It was my friend Andre Bishop san’s idea (from Nihonshu sake bar) and I am very glad that he made an appointment for the KURA (brewery) tour and took me there with him. (Thank you so much, Andre san
)
Since GOSHU was established in 1988, they have been producing quality Australian made Sake to inside and outside of the country. GOSHU’s managing director Allan Noble san & head brewer (Toji) Uchiyama san were both very nice and friendly and they showed us all around the KURA.
I was quite impressed by the set up and of course, the taste of their products, especially GO-SHU JUNMAI DAIGINJO was so fresh & subtle.
Thank you again to Allan san, Uchiyama san & Andre san for this great experience.
http://www.sun-masamune.com.au/home.htm
(L to R) Andre san, Allan san, Uchiyama san & Me
Today, we had a very special guest from Kyoto, Japan, Mrs. Matsumoto from KIZAKURA SHUZO. She is a wife of company’s president and she took a time to visit MAEDAYA during her short stay in Melbourne.
At MAEDAYA, we have KIZAKURA JUNMAI KURANOUTA, KIZAKURA GOLD FLEAK SAKE and KIZAKURA NIGORI SAKE (cloudy unfiltered sake). Also I use KIZAKURA YAMAHAI for most of my Sake Cocktail recipe so I demonstrated a few sake cocktails using YAMAHAI, GOLD FLEAK & NIGORI. I was a little bit nervous to serve sake cocktail to her but she seemed to enjoy them.
Mrs Matsumoto told me that KIZAKURA has limited local beer and it is very interesting to me. I am sure for my next trip to Japan, I will visit Kizakura in Kyoto and try Kizakura beer as well as other freshly brewed sake.
It was very honor to have her in MAEDAYA. I would like to send a big thank to Mrs Matsumoto for visiting MAEDAYA and Ms Tanigawa to arrange it. Arigatogozaimashita.
Kizakura English Official HP
http://kizakura.co.jp/ja/en/index.html
Last Saturday, I had a very special guest visited MAEDAYA. It was M san family and actually Mrs. M is a niece of the president of RANMAN AKITAMEIJO! It was very exciting thing for me to meet people from my favorite sake brewery surprisingly in Melbourne!
So today, I would like to introduce RANMAN AKITAMEIJO here in my blog.
AKITAMEIJO was established in 1926 in Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture. Yuzawa City is famous for Onsen (hot spring), Ski and Akita Bijin (Akita beautiful ladies. Famous one is Onono Komachi 9 century’s poetess.) Most importantly, Yuzawa City has a perfect environment for sake brewing such as good rice, beautiful pure water and cold climate in winter time.
AKITAMEIJO believes that the most important thing about sake brewing is “Love and passion for growing sake based on human relations”. They also believes that stable supply of stable quality items are very important to satisfy the consumer’s needs so they have 2 different Kura (brewing house), one has fully automatic computer system (Mitake Kura) and the other one has human manual system (Ogachi Kura).
Most of RANMAN sake is made from Akita local grown rice such as Akita Sake Komachi, Akita Komachi and Menkoina with traditional strong style sake brewing method succeeded by Sannai Toji and beautiful Akita snow water. Its flavour is generally soft sweet and rich in body. In Melbourne, we have 4 different bottles DAIGINJO HANARANMAN KOMACHI, GINJO REIRYO, JUNMAI FUNAOROSHI & KIMOTO TOKUJO ONJOZO available from Sake Japan, Taxi Dinning, Vue De Monde and Maedaya.
Please come and try one of the finest sake from Akita, Japan!
http://www.ranman.co.jp/
Last night, one of the regular customers at Maedaya “J” san and me were talking about the history of sake. Then suddenly one of the question occurred in our minds “Who is the oldest sake brewery that is still existing in Japan?” To be honest, I didn’t know who is so I promised J san to make a research for it.
As far as I can find out on internet, the answer will be Sudohonke from Obara city, Ibaragi prefecture. They have been brewing sake since 1141 (Heian Era). It’s over 850 years!! The head of brewery, Yoshiyasu Sudo is the 55th generation president and he is the only person who can succeed to Sudo family’s top secret original brewing method. (Even other veteran Toji sake artisans can’t know everything of it.)
Sudohonke has 5 words of “Sake, Rice, Soil, Water, Tree”. It means to make good sake, good rice is necessary. To make good rice, good soil is necessary. To make good soil, good water is necessary. To make good water, good tree is necessary. That’s why cutting trees are prohibited in Sudohonke and over 600 trees in their property are transplanted only when it is necessary.
To make sake, sudohonke use their well water in property and contracted premium sake rice only. To keep the original flavour and freshness of sake, most of their sake is delivered unpasteurized as Namazake. I can see their famous bottles must be very popular and will be delivered quickly to all over Japan.
Unfortunately, I haven’t tasted any of Sudohonke series yet but I will try my best to introduce Sudohonke sake bottle to Australia one day.
Sudohonke (Ibaragi) http://www.sudohonke.co.jp/ (English site)
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