Father's Day is June 16

Matsuse Brewery in Shiga

Kayoko Akabori on

Walking into a sake brewery is like walking into someone's home. In the old days, it was customary that the kurabito (brewery workers) all stayed in shared housing at the brewery during the brewing season – people traveled from far and wide from their hometowns to work at the brewery for six months out of the year, leaving their families behind to make as much money as they could. The kurabito would be together for literally 24 hours a day – waking up at dawn, eating breakfast together, going through a grueling day of work, taking baths together, and sitting down for dinner with a few drinks before passing out. They become a family this way, whether they like it or not, which was probably the intention all along. 

Our recent visit to Matsuse felt like this – stepping into someone's home, where the brewers all treated one another like family. The fit young onichan (elder brothers) all wore their uniforms with pride and looked up to their toji Keizo Ishida. It was mesmerizing to watch, them running from one end of the brewery to the other with a pail of rice on their shoulders; scooping freshly made rice into the drying machine; treating their koji with love and care. 

Yoko and I pulled up to Matsuse Brewery on a Saturday morning – we realized how big Shiga Prefecture is as we traveled an hour to get there by taxi from Kita Brewery, also in Shiga. Every time we had told a local that we were going to Matsuse, they would raise their eyebrows and tell us they were famous and highly secretive, so we knew we were in for a treat. We had met Ishida-toji last year, when we hosted him at our shop for a Meet the Brewer event, and knew we wanted to visit him on our next trip to Japan.  

Matsuse Brewery has been making sake since 1860 in the Ryuou area of Shiga Prefecture – they are the makers of the popular sake line Matsu no Tsukasa, which we carry at Umami Mart. They use organic practices for their rice growing, and as you'll see below,  

We had asked him ahead of time if we could take photos of the shikomi (prep) for the day's batch of sake, and he kindly agreed. Wow, how lucky for us! We would get there right when the rice had finished steaming, and Yoko and I would be ready to photograph and video. 

A sake brewer's version of scrubs

Gathering around the freshly steamed vat of rice

Mahiro Hishida loads the pail of rice onto his shoulder and runs it to the next room

Rice gets dumped here in the main room in preparation for koji

The rice is evenly divided and laid out on large sheet pans

Spreading out the rice to cool down

Ishida-toji overseeing the rice prep

President Tadayuki Matsuse

Ichitaro Kobayashi loads rice onto the drying machine

The rice spits out from the conveyor belt into this tank 


A rain of rice

The tank is filled with water, freshly steamed rice, and ice to cool down the temperature as fast as possible

Kazunari Hara is an incredibly fit kurabito had the arduous task of stirring this mash, mixing the ice, water, and rice. Sake making continues to be a very physical task.

Taking the rice into the koji room

Ishida-toji training President Matsuse's son Hiroyoshi to make koji

Spreading koji onto the rice

Kneading the koji spores into the rice. They make a new batch of koji daily. The room was sweltering.

Taking koji inoculated rice upstairs. This building is over a century old

President Matsuse swirling the koji

Koji - it was super chewy and tasted spritzy

Ishida-toji was so kind to take us around to two of the plots of land they own to grow rice. Ishida-san is a terroir nut who believes that the differences in soil can affect the flavor of the rice, thus changing the flavors of the sake. This makes sense to me!

Different soil from various plots expresses different clay types and minerals like lime. The color and density of the soil were vastly different at the two locations, even though they were only 10 minutes away from one another. We learned that Yamada Nishiki sake rice thrives in soil rich in clay; while mineral heavy soil develops lighter style sakes.
Matsu No Tsukasa's most recent line of sake, the Ryuou Yamadanishiki line, is differentiated between the soil type where their rice is grown. 
Ishida-toji has been with Matsuse Brewery since 2001 and became toji in 2010. This is his 23rd brewing season. He loves wine and pottery.

Back at the brewery we had a lengthy kikizake (sake tasting) where we were able to try his more experimental sakes of the last few years. His focus now is expressing terroir through the different plots of land they own around Shiga, as well as blending sakes. This month we are proud to feature Ishida-toji's first ever blended sake Cuvee Isabel for Sake Gumi.

Ishida-san's passion and curiosity about sake-making comes out in his process and drink. His sakes are pensive and experimental, but not in any trendy or off-putting way like they can be these days. He focuses on making a highly drinkable, delicious sake, and tinkering with round about ways to get there.
It is an utmost pleasure, more of an honor really, for us to be able to travel all around Japan and visit so many breweries and distilleries. All breweries have various little subtle differences, even though they perform the same task of making sake, and I love discovering all the nuances. 
We can't thank Ishida-san and President Matsuse enough for taking the time with us and showing us around their brewery – we learned so much this day and are proud to carry all the Matsuse sakes we possibly can.