Sake moves into the American mainstream
When Shinobu Kato first tried sake as a young man in Tokyo, it tasted harsh and sharp to him. He hated it. But, he recalls, an older colleague told him that he was drinking cheap, poorly made sake. As he was introduced to better styles, Kato grew to love it.
When he moved to the United States in 2004 to study business at the University of Maryland, he could afford only the sorts of bad sake that had left such a terrible first impression. So he decided to brew his own, steaming and fermenting rice in his kitchen. To his surprise, he and his friends adored it.
Kato continued brewing sake after he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to work for Nissan. He grew so passionate that in 2016, with the encouragement of his wife, Ayako, he moved to New York City’s Brooklyn with the aim of opening his own sake brewery.
He equipped himself with small stainless steel vats from a brewery supply house, bought rice grown in California, and ordered yeast and other necessities by mail from Japan. In April 2020, just weeks into the COVID-19 lockdown, Kato Sake Works opened in a 500-square-foot industrial space.
It now sells four kinds of sake, with numerous special batches. The brewery has done so well, Kato said, that it will soon move to a space five times as big.
Kato’s timing could hardly be better. Sake sales are booming around the world and in the United States. Exports from Japan more than doubled in volume from 2012 to 2022, from roughly 14 million liters per year to nearly 36 million liters, according to the Japanese Sake and Shochu Makers Association, a trade group. Exports to the United States in that period grew to more than 9
million liters per year from just under 4 million liters.
Paradoxically, as the popularity of sake rises elsewhere, it is declining in Japan. The population is aging, people are drinking less in general, and younger folks have yet to take up sake, said Chicako Ichihara, New York liaison officer for the sakemakers association. Still, she said, sales of premium sake are stable. It’s the cheaper stuff, the sort of sake that Kato first tasted, that fewer people are buying.
For years, sake proponents have proclaimed that it would be the next big thing in the American alcoholic beverage market. But it never took off, even as other categories, like tequila and natural wines, grew from niche markets to the mainstream. Now, though, evidence of a leap seems to be all around.
The sake brewery Brooklyn Kura is expanding in partnership with Hakkaisan Brewery, a Japanese
sake producer. Asahi Shuzo, which makes the Japanese sake brand Dassai, is constructing a brewery in Hyde Park, New York, to produce Dassai Blue, a brand for the U.S. market. It is expected to open this year.
In Hot Springs, Arkansas, a 24,000-square-foot brewery for Origami Sake — almost 10 times the size of Kato’s new brewery — is scheduled to open in
May. Master brewers from Nanbu Bijin, a Japanese brewery, will act as advisers, but the financing and ownership is American.
“It will be the largest U.s.-owned brewery, with a capacity of 1 million liters a year,” said Matt Bell, chief executive of Origami. “The goal, really, is to move sake into the mainstream.”
If Arkansas seems an odd place to put a sake brewery, the state is by far the leading producer of rice in the United States, growing nearly 40% of the national production. As for the
other major necessity for sake brewing, Bell points out that Hot Springs is renowned for the quality of its water.
Sake produced in the United States accounts for a small fraction of the sake sold domestically. Most is imported from Japan, and wine importers have gotten in on the act. In New York City, Zev Rovine Selections, a natural-wine specialist, and Skurnik Wines, a national importer and distributor, have added sake to their portfolios. The upward trajectory of sake sales has been mirrored at Skurnik, said Jamie Graves, who manages its Japanese beverage lineup.
The jump in the last few years has been particularly noticeable in retail, as you might expect, given the restaurant shutdowns during the pandemic.
“Retail sake exploded in 2020 and never went away,” Graves said. “It went from 15 to 20% of our sake sales to 40%, staying steady even after restaurants reopened.”
At Sakaya, a retailer that opened in Manhattan in 2007, sake sales took a huge jump during the pandemic, said Rick Smith, who owns the business with his wife, Hiroko Furukawa.
“Interest in sake has increased,” he said. “You can see it in more importers and the proliferation, at least in New York City, of all these sushi omakase restaurants.”
When Yoko Kumano and Kayoko Akabori opened Umami Mart in Oakland, California, in 2012, specializing in Japanese goods, they did not sell sake. But they got a license in 2014, and now, Kumano said, sake is their No. 1 seller.
If any individual could take credit for the rising interest in sake in New York, it might be Tadao Yoshida, the entrepreneur behind Japan Village, a complex of Japanese food stalls, groceries and other goods in Brooklyn. He also owns Kuraichi, a sake store at Japan Village.
Yoshida has for years sought to introduce Americans to the pleasures of Japanese food and beverages. Over the past 50 years, he built and owned a Japanese-oriented food-anddrink empire in the East Village, including the original location of Sunrise Mart Grocery; Village Yokocho, a restaurant; and Angel’s Share, a renowned cocktail bar. All are now gone, and he is putting his efforts into Japan Village. He wants people to understand the subtleties of sake.
“It’s sometimes mild, sometimes sweet,” he said. “Some are good for eating with steak.”
Richard Geoffroy — who was for 28 years the face of Dom Perignon, overseeing the production of the Champagne and traveling the world to promote it — was so drawn to sake that in 2019, he left the company to create, with Japanese partners, his own sake. Though impeded by the pandemic, they built their own brewery and made their first sake, IWA, in 2020. It was released in New York and California last year, and, now past the depths of the pandemic, Geoffroy has resumed his globe-trotting, proselytizing the beauty of sake and IWA.
IWA is terrific, smooth and light in the mouth, with a floral, lightly fruity aroma but savory, too. The only problem? The Dom Perignon prices. IWA retails for roughly $200 a bottle. (Most bottles fall into the $25 to $50 range.)
Graves suggests the rising interest in the U.S. is fueled by a rapid increase in American tourism. From 2010 to 2019, the number of Americans visiting Japan rose from roughly 900,000 per year to about 2.2 million, according to JTB Tourism Research and Consulting, which tracks tourism in Japan. Many of these travelers return home with heightened interest in Japanese culture, food and sake.