Akita Meijo Shuzo· 秋田銘醸

Yuzawa, Akita Prefecture · Est. 1922

Most of the breweries in our portfolio are small family operations, where the same surname has been above the door for two hundred years. Akita Meijo has a different origin story.

In 1922, 88 investors gathered in Yuzawa: brewers, politicians, and financiers, united by the ambition to bring Akita's sake to the national market at a scale no single family could manage alone. They built a modern brewery with a production capacity of 10,000 koku from day one. To name their sake, they held a national public competition. A bold marketing move in an era before advertising as we know it. The winning name was Ranman: abundant beauty, a reference to blooming flowers and the flourishing of good things. The sake quickly expanded to Sendai, Tokyo, and beyond, and by the 1970s, Ranman was one of the most recognised sake brands in Japan.

Yuzawa sits in the Yokote Basin in the south of Akita, with the Ou Mountain range rising to the east, rice paddies rolling to the west, and Mt. Chokai dominating the distant horizon. It is sometimes called the Nada of Tohoku; a reference to the legendary sake-producing district near Osaka and the comparison is well-earned. The water is cold and pure, the climate severe enough to make slow, controlled fermentation natural rather than engineered. Akita's signature brewing approach, low-temperature and long-period fermentation, takes full advantage of this: the cold suppresses rapid fermentation, the extended timeline builds complexity, and the resulting sake is characteristically soft, clean, and refined.

Ninety-nine percent of the rice used comes from Yuzawa and the neighbouring Ogachi region, sourced from identifiable producers. Much of it is Akita Sake Komachi, the prefecture's own sake rice variety, developed in 1998, prized for the elegant sweetness and fragrance it brings to the mash. The Sannai Toji, master brewers with roots in the Sannai district of nearby Yokote City, once came only for the winter brewing season; they are now full-time members of the brewery, year-round.

Akita Meijo operates two separate brewing facilities. MITAKEGURA is a fully computer-controlled plant that ensures the consistent supply of Ranman's mainstream range, the sake that still stocks izakayas and supermarket shelves across Akita. OGACHIGURA is the other side of the operation: a traditional hand-crafted brewery where the premium Daiginjo is made by hand, slowly, with the same care you would expect from a fraction of the scale.

Ranman is not, and has never claimed to be, a rare artisan label. It is a brewery that has fed a prefecture's sake culture for a century, and is now doing the serious work of elevating the quality tier it is known for.