ISSUE 004  ·  JULY 23, 2026

Three issues in, you have the shape of it: more sake breweries here than anywhere outside Japan, a rule in Tokyo that put them here, and a bottle that made the trip back.

From this week the newsletter settles into what it does. Every issue: a bottle, a brewery or a Japanese kura, one thing explained properly, a beginner's slot, and what's on. Rotation published, so you know what's coming.

We're starting with the brewer whose medal makes the whole argument arguable.

JUNMAI GINJO NAMA  ·  HOLBROOK, ARIZONA

Two of those need saying out loud. The brewery publishes no sake meter value, and we'd rather print that than round one off. And the 50 percent polish comes from a single source — Smithsonian — which would be unusually hard for a bottle labeled junmai ginjo. We've asked.

The tasting note we'll stand behind is Richard Grant's, writing in Smithsonian in October 2021: "To me, it tasted like sunshine, lemons and pears." Elsewhere in the same piece he found "apple, apricot, banana and walnut."

Where to buy: direct from the brewery through Vinoshipper, which is where their own shop sends you — 370ml for $26.50, larger format $52.50. Two warnings from that page, both worth heeding: it takes about a week to go out, and they don't ship cold, which for an unpasteurized sake in summer is a real consideration. They also can't ship into Arizona. Prices checked July 23, 2026.

Holbrook sits on old Route 66 in northeastern Arizona, closer to the Petrified Forest than to anything else. It has around five thousand people. It also has the only sake brewery in the state, run by a man who trained for a decade in Akita and Niigata and passed Japan's first-grade brewer examination before moving to the high desert.

Sakurai started in a two-car garage. His first commercial bottles came out in 2017, roughly a thousand of them that year, in three-month batches. In 2018 he entered SAKE COMPETITION in Tokyo, which that year had opened a new division for sake brewed outside Japan. Seventeen entries. One gold. It went to Arizona Sake's Junmai Ginjo Nama. One of the judges, Kenya Hashimoto, said it was "well harmonized and excellently balanced with the aroma and taste."

Be precise about what that medal is, because it gets inflated. It was the sole gold in the overseas division, in the first year that division existed. It was not the only gold ever won by a sake brewed outside Japan — since then SakéOne, Shōjō's Dojo, Origami in Arkansas, and producers in New Zealand, Singapore and Mexico have all taken golds at Tokyo competitions. Which is arguably the better fact.

In 2018 an American sake winning in Tokyo was a novelty. Eight years on it's a category.

What makes Holbrook work is not romantic. The water comes from the Coconino Aquifer, and the desert air is dry enough to cut the risk of unwanted mold during fermentation — a genuine problem in humid brewing climates and one of the reasons sake brewing traditionally happens in winter. Sakurai moved to one of the least likely places in America and found conditions that suit the job.

He's still small. Batches went from fifty gallons to a hundred; distribution was around fifty Arizona liquor stores and restaurants as of 2019, plus Whole Foods and Total Wine in the state, and he now ships direct to most of the country. He's also branched sideways in a way nobody in Japan would: a sake brewed with Navajo tea, made with local collaborators. Phoenix New Times' Chris Malloy described it as opening with "a deep florality" before "an elusive fruity flavor flashes, something in the zone of lychee."

The reason this brewery matters to the argument this newsletter makes is straightforward. American craft sake is easy to dismiss as enthusiastic amateurs approximating something they don't understand. It's harder to dismiss when a first-grade brewer with ten years in Akita and Niigata sets up in the Arizona desert and wins in Tokyo.

Every bottle in this newsletter carries a grade, and the grades are the single most misread thing on a sake label.

They measure one variable: how much of each rice grain was ground away before brewing. Milled to 60 percent or less and a sake may be called ginjo. To 50 percent or less, daiginjo. Junmai is a separate axis — it means nothing but rice, water, yeast and koji, with no distilled alcohol added. Combine them and you get junmai ginjo, junmai daiginjo, and so on.

The outer layers of a rice grain hold protein and fat. Grinding them off gives you a lighter, more aromatic, cleaner sake. It also costs money — you're throwing away half the rice — and it takes flavor out along with the fat. That's the trade, and it is a trade, not an improvement.

So a daiginjo isn't better than a junmai. It's made from more heavily milled rice and it will usually taste more delicate and cost more. Whether you prefer it is a separate question, and a lot of experienced drinkers don't. Den Sake in Oakland, from issue two, mills to 80 percent on purpose and gets bread, nuts and umami out of it — flavors a daiginjo is specifically designed not to have.

Two things the grades genuinely don't tell you: freshness, which for an unpasteurized sake matters more than any of this, and whether the brewery is any good. A carelessly made daiginjo is a bad sake with an impressive number on it.

Read the grade as a description of style, not a score. Then ignore it and find a brewer you trust.

Koji (麹) is a mold, Aspergillus oryzae, grown deliberately on steamed rice. Rice has no sugar for yeast to eat, so before anything can ferment, something has to convert its starch — and koji is what does it. That's why it's one of the four legal ingredients in junmai sake, and why brewers talk about it the way winemakers talk about vineyards. It's also the same organism behind miso and soy sauce. If you've eaten Japanese food, you've eaten koji.