6th Generation Brewer Sato Jumpei's Resume
The Raw Ingredient — The Rice: Part 2 ("TATENOKAWA" Newspaper 11/06/2013）
TATENOKAWA,Inc. 6th generation brewer, Sato Jumpei here! Thank you for your continued support.
In the last issue , I wrote about the raw ingredient of sake, the rice, in particular contract-cultivated-rice. In this issue I would like to tell you a bit more about how my company evolved. In 2008, my company started contracting out the cultivation of the sake rice varietals, Dewasansan and Miyama Nishiki. However, there was the problem of “middle-grade” (outside standards) rice, which cannot be submitted for class inspection.
This "middle-grade" rice cannot be used as the raw ingredient for any type of special designation sake: neither Honjozo, Junmai, Ginjo, Junmai Ginjo or Daiginjo; regardless of how much you polish it, and thus becomes a bottleneck in the supply chain.
The contract that we signed with the farmers, obligated us to purchase this rice and after brainstorming we found an effective way to use it: we obtained a license to produce a type of shochu made from sake lees which provided us with a use for the leftover sake lees as well in the process.
Unlike the sake it was never going to become a major product for us, but we had created a small side production of sake lees shochu that provided work for the summer months.
It was a year filled with new challenges, where we started contracted cultivation and production of sake lees shochu. 8 years down the line, we continue contracted cultivation and I look forward to a yearly meeting with the farmers when we exchange information and I am able to survey the fields.
6th Generation Brewer Sato Jumpei
