Chiyo
千代
since 1873
Nara prefecture
Tetsuya Sakai began his career as a winemaker in Yamanashi prefecture. He switched to sake when he married a brewer’s daughter and joined her family’s Chiyo brewery, starting as a regular brewery hand and working his way to the top.
Sakai-san is a natural experimenter, playing with different temperatures and rice strains, and he makes an extraordinary number of styles for a brewery of this size. He claims he can’t count the number, but they’re always produced in minuscule amounts. He says he’s on a never-ending quest to unlock more secrets from his rice and find even better ways to use the local water.
Sakai-san says making sake is like baking a cake. In his analogy, rice and water are the body of the cake. The rice-polishing ratio and yeast are simply the icing. “You need the decoration to make it appealing,” he says, “but it’s the quality of the cake that really counts”.
Sakai-san’s flagship Shinomine range is named after the mountains that provide the scenic backdrop to his brewery in rural Nara Prefecture.
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"New strains of rice are created mainly for the farmers. The classic ones are better for brewing with."
Tetsuya Sakai