Hiraizumi Honpo· 飛良泉本舗

Nikaho, Akita Prefecture · Est. 1487

Some breweries carry history. Hiraizumi Honpo is history. Founded in 1487, during Japan's Muromachi period, it is the third oldest sake brewery in the country — and it is still in the hands of the same family, now in its 26th generation. When you drink their sake, you are drinking something that connects to a world five centuries old. We cannot imagine the weight of that inheritance.

The Saito family were not brewers first. They were merchants — wealthy traders who owned kitamaebune, the great cargo ships that sailed Japan's Sea of Japan coast during the Edo and Meiji eras, carrying rice from Akita's fertile plains south to Osaka, and returning with kelp, herring, textiles, and goods from across the country. Sake brewing began as a side business, a way to add value to the rice they were already shipping. In time, it became the heart of everything. The brewery sits in Nikaho city, caught between the deep blue of the Sea of Japan and the dramatic silhouette of Mount Chokai — a sacred volcanic peak that towers over the region and feeds the brewery's groundwater.

It was Masato's father, Shoichiro Saito, who built the name that Hiraizumi is known for today. He studied under the legendary Kinichiro Sakaguchi — the so-called "Sake Doctor" of Tokyo University, a global authority on fermentation — and returned to Nikaho to put that knowledge to work. He doubled down on yamahai: the slow, wild, deeply traditional fermentation method in which the yeast starter is developed over weeks without the protective addition of lactic acid, relying instead on a carefully managed ecosystem of naturally occurring microorganisms. Yamahai sake is known for its texture and grip — full-bodied, with depth, acidity, and a complexity that reflects the life of its fermentation. Under Shoichiro, Hiraizumi's yamahai became a reference point. Since 2023, every sake the brewery makes is yamahai.

Then Masato came home. After years working as a salesman at a broadcasting company in Tokyo, he returned to Nikaho in 2018 to take over as kuramoto and toji — carrying the full weight of the brewery on his shoulders, and choosing to carry it differently. His answer was the Hiten series, launched in 2019: a line built on the same yamahai foundation as everything his father made, but layered with a new kind of acidity. Masato experiments with white koji — the koji strain typically used in shochu production, which generates citric acid rather than the gentler acids of standard yellow koji. Combined with the lactic acid of yamahai fermentation and malic acid from a fresh, fruit-forward yeast, the result is sake of unusual brightness: aromatic, layered, and refreshing, with a presence that lands beautifully in a wine glass. Lower in alcohol, lighter in body, and alive with a citrusy lift — it is unmistakably modern, and unmistakably Hiraizumi.

The brewery that survived five centuries did so by knowing when to hold tradition and when to expand it. Masato seems to know exactly which is which.