ISSUE 007  ·  SEPTEMBER 17, 2026

On Tuesday we stood at a bar on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg, Florida, about twenty people deep, with Masaaki Saito in the middle of it. He is the twenty-seventh generation of his family to run Hiraizumi Honpo, a brewery in Nikaho, Akita, that has been making sake since 1487. So we asked him the question this newsletter exists to ask: has he ever tasted sake brewed in America?

He has. He liked it. And last year he bought a bottle of Brooklyn Kura and carried it back to Akita to share at the brewery.

That is the whole argument of this publication, answered by a man with five centuries behind him. We will have the full piece on him next week. This week: a woman in Mie who wrote to a cartoonist and got her family brewery back, a bottle from Arkansas, and what a polishing ratio actually buys you.

Moriki Shuzo is a very small brewery in Iga, in Mie prefecture, founded in 1897. Rumiko Moriki is the fourth generation of her family to own it. She and her husband Hideki stepped in when her father could no longer work — Nancy Matsumoto and Michael Tremblay date the handover to 1988, after a stroke; the importers who sell her sake variously say 1989 and the late nineties, and none of them shows its working.

What is not in dispute is what happened next, because she has told it many times. The brewery was failing. At one in the morning on June 22, 1991, she finished the last volume of Natsuko no Sake, a manga by Akira Oze about a young woman who takes over her father's failing kura — a kura being a sake brewery, and the word this newsletter is named after. She wrote to Oze. She enclosed her driver's licence, because she and his fictional heroine shared a birthday.

He wrote back. Matsumoto and Tremblay describe him sending brewers to help her and introducing her to the study group where she found a mentor; her American importer adds that he drew a label for a new line of junmai — sake made from nothing but rice, water, koji and yeast — which she named Rumiko no Sake, after herself. All he asked for in return was the sake.

She is widely described, by her importers and by herself, as the first woman in Japan to work as a tōji, a brewery's master brewer. We have not found a competing claim, and we have not found a source for it that is independent of her. Take it as hers.

The part that needs no hedging is the present tense. The tōji at Moriki Shuzo today is Rie Toyomoto, who has a bottle named after her — RIE STYLE. Rumiko's daughter Nozomi works on the floor too. Three women brew there, nearly everything is done by hand, and they grow their own rice organically. Rumiko went on to found the Kurajosei Summit, the support network for women in Japanese sake brewing.

America is further along that road than it looks. Chiaki Takahashi brews at Islander Sake on Hawai'i Island and is the Sake Brewers Association of North America's own master brewer. Jillian Watanabe runs Tsuki Sake in Salt Lake City. Emily Keiko Doi holds a producer's licence in the Finger Lakes and has had almost nothing written about her. Nobody had to write a letter to a cartoonist.

Where to buy: Astor Wines in New York carries Tae no Hana "Sublime Beauty," a kimoto junmai, unpasteurized and undiluted, at $39.99 for 720ml — in stock and shipping, checked September 17, 2026. Rumiko no Sake itself we could not find for sale anywhere in the United States.

SINGLE ORIGIN JUNMAI DAIGINJO  ·  HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS

Origami brews in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on mineral water off the Ouachita Mountains and within a few miles of the farm that grows its rice. The tōji is Justin Potts, who the brewery lists as a certified sakasho — a master of sake — and a sake instructor certified in Japan.

Angelfish is the top of their range and the label says why: single origin. The rice is Yamada Nishiki from Isbell Farms, one Arkansas family's fields rather than a blend, polished down to 40 percent. At a sake meter value of −14 it is properly sweet on paper, with an acidity of 2.3 doing the arguing back. The brewery describes honeydew, pear, fig and honeysuckle, and calls it surprisingly light; that is the producer's own copy and should be read as such. They suggest braised eel, steak tartare, or a caprese salad.

Where to buy: thin online right now. We checked four US retailers on September 17, 2026 — including Origami's own shop and a store in Little Rock, an hour from the brewery — and all four were out of stock. The useful route is Origami's own store locator, which will tell you what is on a shelf near you, or asking your sake shop to order it. List price is $55.

Before a grain of rice is brewed it is milled, and the number on the bottle — the seimai buai, or polishing ratio — is how much of the grain is left when the milling stops. Angelfish is 40 percent. Sixty percent of every grain was ground away before anyone added water.

The reason is that a grain of rice is not the same all the way through. The starch sits in a dense core; the outer layers carry most of the protein, fat and minerals. Those outer layers give a sake body, savour and earthiness. Take them off and what is left ferments cleaner and more aromatic — the melon-and-pear register that the ginjo grades are known for. The Japanese grades are drawn straight off this number: 60 percent or less makes a ginjo, 50 percent or less a daiginjo.

So a low number is a real thing, bought with real rice. Milling to 40 percent throws away more than half the harvest and takes hours of careful, heat-controlled work, and the price of the bottle reflects it.

What a low number is not is a quality score, and the clearest proof is in this issue. Rumiko Moriki's Tae no Hana is Yamada Nishiki — the same prized rice as the Angelfish — polished to 90 percent remaining. Almost nothing taken off. Astor's buyer calls the result dark, savoury and full-bodied, heady with umami. It is a serious sake made by a famous brewer, and by the logic of the number alone it should be the humbler bottle. It simply wants something else: weight instead of perfume, and food instead of a wine glass.

Two bottles, the same rice, 40 percent and 90 percent. Neither is a better sake. They are answers to different questions.

SMV is the sake meter value, nihonshu-do in Japanese, and it is a density reading. Sugar makes a liquid heavier than water and alcohol makes it lighter, so the scale runs negative for sweeter and positive for drier, with zero in the middle. Angelfish sits at −14, which is a long way into sweet. Moriki's Tae no Hana is −4. But sweetness is not a number you can read off a page: acidity cuts it, and Angelfish carries a high 2.3, which is why the brewery can call a −14 sake light. Treat SMV as the first thing you know about a bottle, never the last.