Niigata and Nagano, Japan

Sake casks recorded with the rice field, the brewing day and the ageing room.

Small breweries in Niigata and Nagano brew sake from rice grown in their own valleys. We record each cask's rice field, brewing day and ageing room, so a buyer can see the sake's full history.

Wooden tags on the cask room wall

KS-8101Niigata 3Koshihikari fieldBrewed

KS-8107Nagano 5Miyama fieldAged 2 years

KS-8113Niigata 7Koshihikari fieldBottled

KS-8120Nagano 2Miyama fieldBrewed

Rows of wrapped sake casks stacked at a Japanese shrine

Kept in the ageing room

A cask leaves the kura with its rice field, brewing day and ageing room already on record. The buyer reads the same lines the brewer wrote, behind the paper label.

Ageing room temperature, six months, no break logged

Rice field

Each cask names the field where its rice was grown and the harvest year.

Brewing day

The brewing day and the koji batch are written on the cask line.

Ageing room

Ageing temperature and time are logged until the cask is bottled.

Milling, brewing, resting, bottling

  1. MillRice from the named field is milled and logged.
  2. BrewThe cask is brewed and the day is recorded.
  3. AgeThe ageing room and temperature are logged.
  4. BottleThe cask is bottled with its record code.
Old sake brewery front with a large clay jar and a cedar ball hanging by the door