Five centuries: visiting Akita’s oldest breweries
Some breweries date back to the Muromachi era. Their founding years show how long this land has been making sake.
Several Akita breweries are more than three centuries old. Line up their founding years and you see how long sake has been woven into life here.
1487: Hiraizumi
Hiraizumi Honpo in Nikaho was founded in 1487. It is the oldest brewery in Tōhoku and said to be the third oldest in Japan, and yamahai is still its signature.
1615: Fukukomachi
Kimura Shuzo in Yuzawa traces its roots to Kimura Shigenari, a Toyotomi retainer. It was founded in the year of the Siege of Osaka and grew with the Innai silver mine.
1670s–1689: Chiyomidori, Ippaku Suisei, Hideyoshi
Okuda Shuzoten (Chiyomidori) in Daisen dates from the 1670s, Fukurokuju (Ippaku Suisei) in Gojōme from 1688, and Suzuki Shuzoten (Hideyoshi) in Daisen from 1689. The name Hideyoshi was granted by the Satake lords of Akita.
In the full list of 33 breweries you can sort them from oldest to newest.
From the land to the glass: a year of mountain, water, paddy and brewery
Behind every glass of Akita sake is a yearly cycle that begins with snow on the mountains.
Two breweries in Rokugō, the town of springs
Misato’s Rokugō has around a hundred springs. From the same town’s water come two very different sakes.
Reading Akita through its sake rice
Follow the rice behind Akita’s signature sakes and one local variety after another appears.