Looking Ahead to the Next 100 Years of Sake Brewing: Moving on to a New Location
Michizakura Shuzou Co., Ltd.
| Publication date | June 16, 2021 (Posted on May 11, 2022) |
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| Sector | Industrial and economic activities |
Company Overview
Michizakura Shuzou Co., Ltd. was founded in Nakatsugawa City, Gifu Prefecture in 1877. We have been producing "Michizakura" our Japanese sake named after the founder, Yamada Michisuke, using local rice grown with minimal use of pesticides in a scenic area overlooking the Kiso Mountains and fresh water from the company-owned mountain. In November 2020, we moved our headquarters to Higashikawa, Hokkaido, making a fresh start as the town's first sake brewery and one of the very few “publicly built and privately operated” breweries in Japan. We will continue to develop our brewing that will be loved by the local community, and make sake that Higashikawa will be proud to share and deliver across Japan and to the world.
Climate Change Impacts
We have been brewing sake for 143 years in Nakatsugawa City, Gifu Prefecture, where it was founded. We produced 20,000 bottles of "Michizakura" sake per year, which gained great reputation and support from our customers mainly in Tokyo, for its refreshing and sweet yet crisp taste that matched any type of cuisine.
However, our sake brewery which we had been using since our establishment in the Meiji era, had been getting old despite our continued maintenance including partial expansion and renovation. Sake brewing requires thorough temperature control, but with the rise in average temperature due to global warming and the consecutive warm winters, it had become increasingly difficult to control the temperature during processes such as cooling. Malted rice and yeast are what determine the taste of sake, but when the room temperature rises, the yeast ferments too fast, and that slight change in temperature had made it difficult for us to produce the ideal sake.
Adaptation Initiatives
In 2019, when we were looking for a solution for the aging facilities and temperature controls, Higashikawa in Hokkaido, was putting out an unusual open call for a "public-private" sake brewery management company, and we decided to apply. Under the “public-private” system, the town provides the facilities for the brewery and leaves the brewing and operation to the private brewery. Higashikawa is located near the center of Hokkaido, at the foot of Asahi-dake, Mount Daisetsu, and is one of the best rice producing areas in Hokkaido, yet had no expertise in local sake brewing at the time. Many aspects of our proposal were highly evaluated, including our technology to maintain and improve quality within a different production environment, the potential for new employment and the brewery tours being a tourist attraction, and the fact that our staffs were fluent in languages and had experience lecturing sake brewing overseas (in Mexico), making it possible to widely promote the attraction of Higashikawa and locally produced sake to the world. We had been selected, the new facility was completed, and the inauguration ceremony was held in November 2020.
We started cooperating with the local Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA); JA officers has been cultivating sake rice for the first time and harvesting sake rice of good quality. As paddy fields become larger, JA is planning to build “country elevators” (large warehouses) and other facilities for joint use by farmers in order to reduce investment and costs for individual farmers and to improve quality and add value.
Higashikawa and JA has also been working to reduce the burden on producers by enhancing the hometown tax system. As a part of this effort, new varieties of Higashikawa’s original sake were developed, brewed with Higashikawa’s original sake rice, Comet and Kitashizuku. Reservations for the hometown tax return gift started from December 2020, under the name of “ Higashikawa Fukuryu-sui Brewed Original Limited Edition Sake.”
Effects / Expected Benefits
Moving the brewery from the original location to a different environment meant changing everything that we had cultivated up to that point in the brewing process, which was a difficult decision for us to make. In sake brewing, differences in rice, water, or temperature result in different tastes. Even so, the decision to continue making new sake using the rich resources of the new home town, Higashikawa, while preserving our traditional brewing methods, and also protecting the brand name “Michizakura” that has been used since our founding, was one way of adapting to the changing environment, and an innovation that brought together the local industry, residents and government of Higashikawa and Michizakura Shuzou. As a joint effort of a long-established sake brewery that saw the potential of sake brewing in the northern land and a town that sought to develop its signature product, we will continue to develop our products, cultivate sake rice, and contribute to the revitalization of Higashikawa.
