Sake ahoy: matured for six months underwater

by | Jun 4, 2018 | Sake News from Japan

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The Kahoku Online News site reports on bottles of local sake and wine being sunk into Hirota Bay in Iwate Prefecture to mature.

The plan was hatched by a group of organisations calling itself Burari Kesen (ぶらり気仙, “swaying” Kesen) including the Hirota Bay Sports Fishing Cooperative and marine produce developers, and aims to break down divisions between different types of businesses.

The other aim of the project is revitalisation for one of the areas hardest hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake. About 750 bottles of sake brewed by the Suisen brewery in the decimated town of Rikuzentakata and wine from the Kanda Budo orchards will be suspended from aquaculture rafts in the bay.

The bottles will be left for between six months and a year, with the sake being recovered in October 2018 and the wine in March 2019 to be sold at shops and hotels in Rikuzentakata. Tourists were allowed to come and watch the sake bottles being strung up before being lowered into the bay, and the group is considering offering it for sale online.

Naohiro Kajikawa, a representative of the Burari Kesen group, hoped that the underwater maturation experiment would bring people to Rikuzentakata and get them interested in the area’s natural bounty.

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