Mukai Shuzo

Items

Mukai Shuzo (720 ml) Ine Mankai Sake (Red Rice), Kyoto Prefecture	Login	—	In Stock
Mukai Shuzo (720 ml) Kyo No Haru, Junmai Nigori, Kyoto Prefecture	Login	—	In Stock

In the early 90's Kuniko left her small fishing village to study fermentation at Tokyo University of Agriculture. Soon after, she would become the family brewery's Toji and one of Japan's first female brewers.

Tasked with running the 268 year old brewery, Kuniko has ushered in an era of producing singular sake's using methods that predate industrialization (which much like wine, abstracted and obscured sake from it's original form)

Complicated by industrialization, rice farming in Japan is incredibly difficult for sake breweries to trasnform, unlike what we see in natural wine. However, what a small number of natural Sake brewers can do is source their rice as best as possible (a task that is also incrediblly difficult) Kuniko dedicates the use of local varieties of rice to her sakes, including Gohyakumangoku, Iwai, and Kyo no Kagayaki & Murasaki red rice.

Brewing: The brewery brews their sake using the same methods since the Edo period (1603-1868). Natural yeasts are used without mashing. More specifically Kuniko has ensured the use of Kimoto production of yeast — a traditional and labor-intensive method of preparing the yeast starter resulting in lusher and more dynamic sake flavor profiles.

Kuniko's sake's find their uniqueness in being both bitter and sweet, making them exceptional for food.