02 — Rice & People
Rice & People
Haguro rice, grown on our brewing water
Ikujo Dogen
Grown and brewed from one origin
The water in the paddy
is the water in the tank.
Our guiding idea is ikujo-dogen: brew only rice grown on water from the same source as our brewing water. The mountain water in the paddies and the water in our tanks both come from Gassan’s snowmelt and the strata of the Dewa Sanzan.
Because each batch comes from growers we know, every step — drying, polishing, washing, soaking, steaming — can be tuned by precise measurement.
Haguro Sake Rice Research Group
The Haguro Sake Rice
Research Group.
Rooted in the Shonai Sake Rice Study Group formed around 1970, it took its current form in 1988 when Miyama-nishiki became a recommended variety in Yamagata. Its members, aged roughly 45 to 70, walk each other’s fields, review every harvest, and share fertilising practices and special-cultivation standards face to face.
Planted area by variety (total 81.6ha)
Quality before Yield
We choose quality
over yield.
We cut chemical fertiliser and pesticides beyond the special-cultivation standard — 4kg of nitrogen instead of 6kg — and some fields use 100% organic fertiliser. Less protein in the grain means a cleaner sake.
Kairyo Shinko grows tall and is famous for lodging. Push for yield and you risk collapse and poor quality. So we build the soil first, and accept less rice to keep it good.
The Growers
Every sake carries
its grower’s name.
We record who grew the rice for every sake we make. Some of these growers become brewers in winter and brew their own rice. “Growing the rice weighs on us more than brewing it” — that is how ikujo-dogen sounds in the field.
- TojiKatsumi MotokiRashinban, Ultra Diamond, Dewasansan 39 and more
- TojiMasayoshi KonnoBono, Miyama-nishiki 55
- TogishiOsamu WatanabeCOSH COSH Kame-no-o 55
- OwnerMasao AizawaCOSH COSH Kyo-no-hana
- Research groupToshiki KoizumiTokusen (koji rice, Miyama-nishiki)
- GrowerEiichi SatoCOSH COSH Tsuruoka Yamada
In blue: Mr. Narusawa, head of the Haguro Sake Rice Research Group, with the son of one of our winter brewers
Toji Masayoshi Konno bringing in the sake rice. After the autumn harvest, the rice is polished at a mill before going on to winter brewing.
Heritage Rice
The roots of Japanese rice
lie behind Mt. Haguro.
In 1893, east of Mt. Haguro along the Tachiyazawa River, Kameji Abe found rice standing firm after a cold summer and spent four years selecting it. Kame-no-o became an ancestor of many of Japan’s finest varieties. We keep it and its descendants, like Kyo-no-hana and Haguro, in our fields — the local history of rice breeding, turned into sake.
Our Kame-no-o sake