The story of sake

Sake (nihonshu or seishu) is made by fermenting rice, rice koji and water and then filtering it. Like wine and beer it is a brewed drink, but the method is quite unusual. Most sake is around 15% alcohol, high for a brewed drink.

In 2015, “Nihonshu” became a geographical indication: only sake made in Japan from Japanese rice may use the name. And in December 2024, Japan's traditional knowledge and skills of sake-making with koji mould were added to UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Have you seen the ball of cedar leaves, the sugidama or sakabayashi, hanging outside a brewery? A fresh green ball announces that this year's new sake is ready. Watching it slowly turn brown as the sake matures is part of sake's charm.

Yeast makes alcohol by eating sugar. But rice contains starch, not sugar. Enter koji: steamed rice on which koji mould has been grown, packed with enzymes that turn starch into sugar.

The fascinating part is that in sake, “starch to sugar” and “sugar to alcohol” happen at the same time, in the same tank. This is called multiple parallel fermentation. Wine simply ferments the sugar already in grapes; beer converts starch to sugar first and ferments afterwards. Doing both at once is rare among the world's drinks.

The mash is built up in three additions of koji, steamed rice and water. Adding everything at once would overwhelm the yeast, so the batch is grown step by step.

Rice suited to brewing is called sake rice: large grains with a soft, white, starchy core called shinpaku. The most famous is Yamada Nishiki, bred in Hyogo in 1923, which makes up about 40% of sake rice. Niigata's Gohyakumangoku follows at about 20%, and Okayama's Omachi has a devoted following.

Words like junmai, ginjo and daiginjo on a label are official special designations, decided by two yardsticks.

• Polishing ratio: how much of the grain is left. 60% means the outer 40% has been ground away. The outer layers hold proteins and fats that can make sake taste rough, so more polishing gives a cleaner, more fragrant sake.
• Brewer's alcohol or not: junmai means only rice and rice koji. Sake without the word has a little brewer's alcohol added to lift the aroma or lighten the body.

Another number you will see is the sake meter value (nihonshu-do), calculated from the sake's density. The higher the plus value, the less sugar and the drier the sake; the further into minus, the sweeter. Acidity also matters: with the same sugar, more acid tastes drier, so read it alongside the acidity figure.

Daiginjo is not simply “the best”. A fragrant daiginjo shines chilled in a wine glass; a rich junmai shines warmed. Each has its moment.

Sake for the gods, sake from temples

The first record of brewing with rice koji is in the Harima no Kuni Fudoki, a regional chronicle from around 716: rice offered to the gods grew mould, so it was made into sake for a feast. In the Nara and Heian periods, the imperial court had its own brewing office to make sake for the palace.

From the Muromachi period into the age of civil war, the most famous sake came from great temples in and around Nara, known as temple sake. Shoryakuji in Nara is known as the birthplace of an early form of bodaimoto, a yeast starter that uses lactic fermentation. Records from 1576 on mention morohaku, sake made entirely from polished white rice, praised as “Nanto Morohaku”. Most of the techniques behind today's sake were in place by this time.

Nada sake sails to Edo

In the Edo period, brewing became concentrated in the cold of winter, and teams of seasonal workers gave rise to the tōji, the master brewer.

The great city of Edo preferred kudari-zake, sake shipped “down” from the Kyoto–Osaka region. Itami's sake led at first, then coastal Nada took over. Ships carrying only sake barrels cut the Osaka–Edo voyage from about a month in the late 17th century to ten days or two weeks by the 1860s, and by the late Edo period about 80% of the sake drunk in Edo came from Nada.

In 1840, Nada discovered miyamizu: sake made with well water from Nishinomiya was so good that the water became famous for brewing.

The age of science, and the world

In 1904 a national brewing institute was founded, and a system of distributing selected “association yeasts” to breweries nationwide followed. Science joined experience, and quality became far more consistent.

After the war, rice shortages led to sake stretched with alcohol and sugars, but such products were dropped from the legal definition of sake in 2006. Shipments peaked at about 1.75 million kL in fiscal 1975 and fell to about 390,000 kL in fiscal 2023, roughly a fifth of the peak. Meanwhile, quality over quantity flourished in ginjo and junmai sake.

Now sake is going global. In 2025 exports reached about ¥45.9 billion, to a record 81 countries and regions, led by China (about ¥13.3 billion) and the United States (about ¥11.0 billion).

Sake is brewed all over Japan, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, by about 1,200 makers. Great sake regions grew where good rice, good water and cold winters come together. By volume shipped, the leaders are Hyogo, Kyoto and Niigata; by number of makers, Niigata, Nagano, Fukushima, Hyogo and Yamagata. Tap a number on the map to jump to it.

1. Akita

Rice country and snow country at once, Akita is fifth in Japan by volume shipped.

2. Yamagata

Fifth by number of sake makers. In 2016, “Yamagata” became the first prefecture-wide geographical indication for sake.

3. Niigata: the most breweries, home of “tanrei”

Niigata has more breweries than any other prefecture. Snow melts slowly into soft, low-mineral water that keeps fermentation gentle, producing fine, clean sake. The Gohyakumangoku rice bred in 1957, the skills of the Echigo tōji, and the Niigata Sake School, founded in 1984 to train young brewers, all stand behind the crisp, light style called “Niigata tanrei”.

4. Aizu (Fukushima)

Fukushima is joint third by number of makers, with many in the Aizu area. In 2024, Minami-Aizu and Kitakata both became geographical indications for sake.

5. Nagano

Second only to Niigata by number of makers, with breweries dotted through its mountain valleys; “Nagano” and “Shinano-Omachi” are geographical indications.

6. Fushimi (Kyoto): the gentle “feminine” sake

Kyoto is second by volume, and Fushimi is its heart. Its water has a hardness of around 80, moderately hard, so fermentation is gentler than in Nada and more sugar remains: hence its soft, so-called “feminine sake”.

7. Nara: where seishu was born

Nara was the stage for temple sake and Nanto Morohaku, where the techniques of today's sake grew up. Shoryakuji is known for its links to bodaimoto.

8. Itami (Hyogo): Edo's favourite

Famous in the early Edo period as “Itami morohaku”, Itami was the star of the sake shipped to Edo. In 2024, “Itami” became a geographical indication for sake.

9. Nada (Hyogo): No. 1 by volume, the bold “masculine” sake

Hyogo ships more sake than any other prefecture, centred on Nada-Gogo, the five brewing districts from Kobe to Nishinomiya. Miyamizu is hard water, around 180, so the yeast works vigorously and eats up the sugar, giving a crisp, dry “masculine sake”. Being close to the fields of Yamada Nishiki helps too. “Nada-Gogo” became a geographical indication in 2018.

10. Saijo (Hiroshima): the town that mastered soft water

Soft, low-mineral water weakens yeast and once caused batches to spoil. In the late Meiji era, Miura Senzaburo of Hiroshima traced his own failures to soft water and, after much experiment, developed a soft-water brewing method. It lifted Hiroshima sake to fame, and Saijo, with its rows of red-brick chimneys, is still one of Japan's great sake towns.

11. Saga

Kyushu is better known for shochu, but Saga is sake country: in 2021 the whole prefecture became the geographical indication “Saga”.

Sake's greatest charm is that it changes with temperature. Chilled, the aroma tightens and the taste turns crisp; warmed, the savouriness and sweetness of rice open up. Each temperature even has its own poetic name.

• Fragrant ginjo and daiginjo: chill to around 10–15 °C and serve in a wine glass.
• Rich junmai and honjozo: warm to 40–45 °C for a rounder taste. Stand the tokkuri in hot water and warm it gently.
• Mokkiri, pouring until the sake spills into the wooden masu, is a gesture of generosity. Lean in and take the first sip without lifting the glass.

And remember yawaragi-mizu, “softening water”: drinking about as much water as sake between sips slows the effect of the alcohol and refreshes your palate for the next glass.