High-end Japanese rice grown exclusively to make a premium Sake wine

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From Left, Hitoshi Suzuki, president of the Ichinokura brewery in Miyagi Prefecture, Kosuke Kuji, president of the Nanbu Bijin brewery in Iwate Prefecture, and his wife Rika, hold trophies in London on July 6, 2017, after winning awards at one of the world's largest wine contests. The Nanbu Bijin brewery won the International Wine Challenge Champion Sake award, while the Ichinokura brewery obtained the Sake Brewer of the Year and the Great Value Champion Sake awards. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 6:54am, 25 Jul 2017Updated: 7:06am, 25 Jul 2017

Brewery executive Kosuke Kuji brought his best sake to a New York booze showcase 16 years ago hoping to promote high-end Japanese rice wine to a new generation of sophisticated foreign drinkers. They were a little disappointed.

It wasn’t that sake from his Nanbu-Bijin brewery failed to live up to its rating back home as Junmai-Daiginjo, the name given to premium grade vintages. But for aficionados of traditional grape-based wines, the local appellation that produces the main ingredient can be almost as important as the final product, think Napa Valley in California, Bordeaux in France, or Chianti in Italy.

Back in 2001, most of the rice used in Nanbu-Bijin sake came from the prefecture of Hyogo. That’s 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) south of where the beverage was made in Iwate, on the northern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu. So when a sommelier at the New York event learned from Kuji where the ingredients came from, the American wine expert seemed let down that the sake wasn’t a more artisanal product.

“He wanted sake made from locally grown rice, just as he likes wine out of its vineyard,“ Kuji, the 45-year-old president of Nanbu-Bijin, said in an interview at his brewery in Ninohe City.

Beautifully Stacked Sake containers with colourful Japanese writing. Photo: Corbis

For Kuji, the experience showed the importance of what’s known in the wine-making world as terroir. It’s a word that the industry uses as a mark of unique regional characteristics and farming practises. The designation also can enhance the value and the appeal of different vintages.