When I began investigating sake (Japanese: 日本酒; nihonshu), I learned the story of Asahi, a small brewery in the city of Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture that found its business floundering in the 70s and 80s as young Japanese were snubbing their noses at the traditional Japanese alcoholic beverage. Sakurai Hiroshi, the young CEO who inherited the business, decided he would buck the trend by making the most premium sake he possibly could. He instructed his brewers to use only premium sake rice (the famous Yamata Nishiki brand), and to keep milling down the rice until only 23% of the outer husk was left. The result was the company’s flagship product, Dassai 23, a light, fruity beverage that impresses even people who are convinced they don’t like sake.
(You can – and should! – read more about Dassai’s fascinating story in this great story from Nippon.com.)
When I went to Japan to meet my wife in person for the first time, we ended up in a restaurant at the top of Shibuya’s Hikari-e plaza. The restaurant’s owner, ironically, was friends with Dassai’s CEO, and carried their full product line. We both tried it for the first time, and instantly fell in love (with the sake and each other). It’s been our household’s go-to sake ever since. While Dassai 23 tends to be expensive (it’s about USD $50 if you buy it in Japan, and double that in the US), they also make Dassai 50 and Dassai 39, which have slightly lower polishing levels, for less cost. There’s also an incredibly cheap version, Tougai (等外), a sort of off-label version made from sake rice that doesn’t meet the quality standards required for government labeling. (Spoiler alert: “Bad Dassai” is still incredibly tasty.)
So you can imagine my distress when my wife texted me the other day that the Asahi Brewery had shut down production due to the massive storms that roiled Japan in July. When the storms rolled through Yamaguchi Prefecture, they did substantial damage to the equipment at the brewery. The brewery lost all of the products in the brewery-operated shop, and a mudslide on the first floor disrupted power. It became hard to manage the heat for a large batch of sake that was in production, and the batch couldn’t be finished by Dassai’s usual standards. At the time, the current CEO, Sakurai Kazuhiro, wondered aloud how they’d handle the ruined batch:
「タンクのお酒は獺祭として胸を張って世には出せないと考えています。一定の味のお酒にはなるので、違うラベルでの販売など、廃棄せずに済む方策を考えています」
We couldn’t put this out as Dassai and be proud about it. Since it will be a single-taste sake, we’re thinking of releasing it under a different label rather than disposing of it.
Fortunately, all seems like it will work out in the end. Manga author Hirokane Kenshi, author of the famous series Section Chief Shima Kousaku (課長島耕作), also a native of Iwakuni, got wind of the disaster, and offered to re-use a special label from a 2016 collaboration with the brewery featuring his titular character, Shima-san. The brewery it set to release its “disaster” batch of sake under the Shima label for around ￥1300 (appr. USD $12), with ￥200 going to disaster relief for seven prefectures hit hard by flooding. Hirokane-san also gave his personal endorsement of the product: “You can’t distinguish it from [regular] Dassai. Incredibly tasty.”
The brewery resumed operations on July 29th, and is working to get production back on track. The limited edition Shima brand goes on sale August 10th with a run of 650,000 bottles. I’m predicting it will go like hotcakes, so if you’re in Japan – or have friends and family there – I suggest grabbing a bottle before they’re all snapped up.
