SAKE : Making at Hakkaisan

In 1922, 4 years after the end of World-War-1, the Nagumo family began brewing SAKE in the Uonuma Valley. Located in Niigata Prefecture in Japan's northeast, Uonuma is blanketed with heavy snow throughout the winter. SAKE brewing had begun hundreds of years before in Japan, making Hakkaisan a relatively new SAKAGURA, or SAKE brewery, even today.

Winters in Uonuma are severe. When the Nagumo family began brewing, SAKE brewing techniques in Japan were still immature, and it was believed that Uonuma's soft water would not be suitable for brewing SAKE, that only the hard water in Kyoto or Kobe could yield good SAKE. Nonetheless, the Nagumo family took up the challenge.

Koichi Nagumo, head of the Nagumo family, was a stubborn man, as is his son, Kazuo, the present chairman of Hakkaisan Brewery Co. Koichi left just one piece of advice shortly before he died: "Make good SAKE." Kazuo has faithfully preserved his father's SAKE brewing methods. "No matter how much it costs in labor or money, if it results in good SAKE, don't back down." Kazuo held to this motto even when Uonuma was just a little, unremarked village whose SAKE had not yet been discovered. His policy never changed, and today the complex taste and high quality of Hakkaisan's SAKE is widely lauded.

It is said that a good person is "one with positive defining characteristics." Hakkaisan SAKE also fits this description. Many Japanese SAKE fans look for the Hakkaisan label at drinking establishments as they would for friends in a crowd.

Like people, SAKE needs the proper balance. This is what drink makers around the world aim for. Hakkaisan has achieved good results on this score. Its SAKE has the perfect balance of understated appeal and a complexity which reflects Japan's natural richness. It deliciously complements any food. Of course, it never disappoints SAKE fans whose motto is, "Hakkaisan is all I need."