Niida Honke

The Free Bacchus Story

Niida Yasuhiko is the eighteenth generation at Niida Honke, brewing in Tamura, on the outskirts of Koriyama, since 1711. His father launched what the brewery calls Japan’s first ‘natural sake’ in 1967. In 2011, the brewery’s 300th year and his first season as its tōji, or master brewer, Yasuhiko declared that everything it made would be natural sake. Then came the earthquake and the Fukushima Daiichi accident. He held his course, and asked organic farmers hurt by rumours about Fukushima food to grow sake rice for him.

Sake is brewed from rice, water, koji mould and yeast. Everything Niida makes is junmai, with nothing else added, not even the distilled alcohol that was common in 1967. It is all kimoto too, the most traditional way to start a ferment. The brewery’s own lactic bacteria sour a paste of rice, koji and water, then yeast living in the building takes over, none added. That takes about forty days, three times the modern method, and the sourness stays in the sake. The flagship, Shizenshu Junmai Genshu, is milled only to 85 per cent, keeping most of each grain, and fed rice in four stages instead of three.

The brewery has grown its own rice since 2003, about six hectares of the old sake rices Omachi and Shinriki, from saved seed, without pesticides or chemical fertiliser. That is roughly a tenth of the rice it brews with; ten contract growers supply the rest.

Niida Honke holds four certificates on Japan’s national organic register. Its farming company, Niida Honke Agri, has had its paddies certified organic by AFAS Certification Center since 2009 (AFASSEQ-AA-090901). The brewery has an AFAS processed-food certificate and two that include alcohol, from JONA (JN230709PR-1920) and Ecocert Japan (260515-001), so it is certified to make organic sake. The contract growers are separate farms, and a brewing certificate covers only the bottles graded under it, so look for the organic JAS mark.