6th Generation Brewer Sato Jumpei's Resume
Days of Searching ("TATENOKAWA" Newspaper 15/05/2015）
Welcome, and thank you once again for reading the “TATENOKAWA” newspaper. Up until the last issue, I wrote about how we found success with the “KODAKARA” liqueur brand but at the same time worried over what to do with the “TATENOKAWA” sake brand.
Since returning to the brewery, I had revived the brand that was in use when the brewery was first established: “TATENOKAWA” (written all in Chinese characters), but in 10 years there was nothing else particularly special to talk about.
The policy of special-designation-only sake was something I had inherited, and in Yamagata Prefecture there was nothing new about Junmai and Junmai Ginjo sake made with Yamagata yeast either. Furthermore, production using locally grown varietal Dewasansan was nothing short of ordinary and it is not like we were particularly prominent, even among the other brands in the prefecture.
That being said, while the storm that was the ‘shochu boom’ blew violently around us, being the youngest brewery in the prefecture meant that expectations and support from our clients was high so little by little we had been able to increase production yield.
However, as many as 10 years had passed since my return so we were no longer able to sell using expectations of a new brand alone and deliberated that from now on we would have to compete using our true strengths: the power of sake itself / product quality and brand strength.
"So then, what were we to do with the brewery? What should we do with “TATENOKAWA” ?"
For a while, it was a worrying few days. Should we shift to Junmai-only? or should we make with only rice grown locally in the prefecture; even though there was no shortage of ideas none of them felt quite right.
The more we thought about various things: the direction of sake, the customers, the quality of sake, the industry, our product line-up; the more we became unable to do anything, unable to take a new step forward.
6th Generation Brewer Sato Jumpei
