Sake's export boom bringing in new fans and food pairings

Japan Today

28-04-2025

By Tom Shuttleworth
When Imada Sake Brewing Co master brewer Miho Imada presented a sake inspired by local seafood to a sommelier from Hong Kong, she asked for pairing suggestions. The answer was surprising: braised pork trotters.
Sake has been enjoying an international boom that's bringing in new fans and food combinations. Even as domestic consumption of Japan's national beverage continues its long decline, the volume exported in 2024 was up 90 percent over 10 years ago.
Aided by the addition of the traditional knowledge and skills used in sake-brewing to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage List in December, this overseas bonanza is giving a shot in the arm to regional brewers like Imada Shuzo, as the brewery is commonly known.
From the quiet port town of Akitsu, facing the Seto Inland Sea, around 30 percent of sales of Imada Shuzo's Fukucho brand of sake come from exports.
The brewery's efforts to export started with the United States in the late 1990s. Today, Imada Shuzo exports to around 20 countries with Canada, South Korea, Singapore, and France, among them.
Its Seafood brew has proven popular. As toji, or head brewer, Imada took a different approach to creating the junmai sake. Starting with a sake to complement oysters, for which the waters of the Seto Inland Sea around Akitsu are an ideal harvesting ground, the result is a lighter sake which the brewery ships to nearly all of its export countries.
A rare female toji, Imada is now the fourth head of her family's brewery. In 2020, she was selected by the BBC as one of 100 "inspiring and influential women" around the world. She is eyeing Thailand and Malaysia, as well as countries in Africa, as potential markets for Fukucho.
She isn't overly protective about how her sake is enjoyed abroad. "As long as people enjoy it, that's fine," she said. But she does draw the line at people drinking sake like a tequila shot, an approach she has often encountered abroad.
The brewing facility that Imada's family established in 1868 is a short walk from the sea. Behind the storehouse, mountains rise sharply. The brewery's landmark red-brick chimney remains from when coal was used in rice-steaming. "When people were looking for liquor stores in town, they would look for this kind of chimney and know there was a sake brewery here," she said.
They might not have come looking were it not for the efforts of Akitsu-born toji Senzaburo Miura.
In the late 19th century, Miura developed a low-temperature brewing method to overcome the biggest challenge facing brewers in Akitsu -- producing good sake from the area's unusually soft water. Low-temperature brewing has since become the go-to method for producing the fragrant ginjo type of sake.
Imada often directs visitors to Akitsu to Sakakiyama Hachiman Shrine, which has ties to the sake brewers of Hiroshima. A bronze statue of Miura stands among stone sake barrels and other tributes from brewers to the shrine.
Imada said she wants people to understand the traditions behind Akitsu's ginjo sake established by Miura and evolved by the Hiroshima master brewers before her.
"I think it's important for people to know why we use certain tools, how we see things, and how we feel, so they can become aware of what is good about Japanese people and about Japan," she said.
Expectations in the industry are high that the UNESCO listing might do for sake what it is thought to have done for washoku, or traditional Japanese cuisine.
In the decade following washoku's UNESCO listing, the number of Japanese restaurants overseas increased threefold, from around 55,000 in 2013 to around 187,000 in 2023, according to farm ministry data.
While exports of sake grew over the same period -- around fourfold to over 41 billion yen in 2023 -- market share remains small.
Sake is thought to account for only around 1 percent of the market for alcoholic beverages that are served with food. An increase of just 1 or 2 percentage points could translate into significant gains for the industry.
There are hurdles to exporting, however. Longer periods of storage and transportation times can compromise the quality of sake, which deteriorates more easily than beverages like wine or whiskey.
To address that problem, Imada Shuzo has been brewing and exporting some of its sake with an improved yeast developed by Hiroshima Prefecture's Food Industry Technology Center. The yeast was unveiled in January under the name Hiroshima LeG-Sou. Developers described the refreshing acidity and fruity aroma of the resulting sake as one that would surprise even wine connoisseurs.
Imada, 63, started brewing around 30 years ago after having returned to Akitsu from Tokyo, where she worked in Noh theater production. She admired the skills of the Hiroshima master brewers and wanted to make sake like them.
The career change is in keeping with the spirit of Hiroshima's master brewers, who were not ones to shy away from change, according to Imada.
"The tradition of the Hiroshima toji is to take on challenges and overcome them by developing skills and techniques. The idea of continuing to change is built into this tradition," she said.
© KYODO