Daisen - Akita.  

Kinmon Shuzo.

Plum wine and aged sake (koshu).

We went to Kinmon Shuzo in Omagari which is one stop before Akita on the Komachi shinkansen. There we met Sasaki San who specialises in plum wine and koshu (aged) sake.

His plum wines are sold all over the world and even in Spain and we can understand why as it conjures up ideas of aged oloroso and sherries.

He blends his sakes with the plum wines and has 3 versions of umeshu which vary according to age. We tasted a lovely one that is blended with sake from 2004. It’s the type that you would expect to see at a high end Japanese restaurant in Melbourne like Minimashima.

He also makes some sake (nihonshu) varieties including a ‘Rose’ which is made from red rice. We will very likely be purchasing this one.

We also had a look at his facilities. What a lovely facility. Beautiful oak barrels and a ‘fune’ sake press. This is quite rare. It’s an old way of pressing the sake, i.e. straining out the rice sediment from the fermenting rice-koji-yeast mixture. We’ve never seen one of these before.

We look forward to bringing these exciting sake and plum wine to Perth. Thanks Sasaki San for spending time to show us around.