YAMAGATA
Yamagata Honten / YAMAGUCHI Pref.
Farmers and Agriculture
Farm Tsuru no Sato
Brewing / Brewer
Yamagata Honten Co.,Ltd.
Design and Art
Kayo Tsukiyama
CONCEPT
This is not just a clean, dry sake,
It is a deliciously dry junmai sake that expresses the individuality of the Ogasawara toji.
Mr. Ogasawara, the toji of Yamagata Honten, originally came from a bartending background and when he was young, he thought, “I want to make whiskey in Scotland, the home of whiskey! He heard that sake brewing was an advantageous career path, so he changed jobs at Enoki Sake Brewery in Hiroshima, which makes “Hana Hato” and entered the sake brewing industry. After that, he worked as a brewer at Yamagata Honten for many years without going to Scotland, where his skills were recognized and he became the toji (chief brewer). As a former bartender, he likes blending and mixing various things and using various ingredients to make sake. When we tasted these sakes, we found that the quality of the “dry” sakes, which we had not marked as such, was generally good, and that they were not simply refreshingly dry, but were deliciously dry with a distinctive character. The sake that was created from scratch is the Ogasawara-style dry junmai, named after the brewer.
Sake rice producer / Farm Tsuru no SatoTo protect farmland in the Yatsushiro area and an environment where cranes can live.
Farm Vine Village was established in 2006 to protect farmland in the Yatsushiro district of Shunan City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, and the environment where cranes live. 47 members cultivate 30 ha of land, mainly rice. In recent years, the cooperative has been cultivating wheat for local production for local consumption and shipping it as an ingredient in bread for school lunches in the prefecture. The Yamagata Art Label series uses Yamada-Nishiki, a pesticide-reduced, contract-grown rice grown in the village of Vine.
Brewery / Yamagata Honten Co.,Ltd.
If you make sake with all your heart, your feelings will be conveyed to people all over the world.
Yamagata Honten, the brewer of Yamagata Art Label, was founded in 1875. In 1984, the company launched its first product, “Kahori,” a draft sake, which became a hit. It was one of the first to introduce the “Yamakon,” an aroma-adding process that was considered a revolutionary technology at the time, and contributed to the stable supply of unpasteurized sake, which was not widely distributed at the time. After passing the baton to the younger generation, the brewery has continued to value tradition while taking on the challenge of trying new things. The toji's passion is to “make beautiful sake” and to “make sake with all one's heart. He also believes that “if you make sake with all your heart, people all over the world will understand your feelings,” and he puts his heart and soul into brewing sake every day so that his customers can enjoy drinking it.
Design / Kayo Tsukiyama
