Rising up in Japan, Atsuo Sakurai had by no means heard of Holbrook, Arizona, nor did he know he would in the future transfer to the USA. He was extra centered on beginning his personal brewery, a dream he nurtured whereas working in sake factories. However destiny intervened when he met and fell in love with an American lady named Heather who was residing in Japan instructing English. After the 2 married in 2009, they determined to settle within the U.S.
The couple first landed in Seattle, the place Sakurai hoped to open a sake brewery within the Pacific Northwest. However they knew few folks within the space, and with little help system, Sakurai stated he felt “like a stranger.” Nonetheless, he persevered—till destiny stepped in as soon as once more in 2015, when he and his household took a brief journey to Arizona, the place Heather had been born and raised. In the future throughout the go to, he occurred to sit down down on a park bench subsequent to a stranger, and the 2 acquired to speaking whereas they watched their kids play. When Sakurai casually talked about his dream of opening a brewery, “He questioned me, ‘Why not do it right here?’” Sakurai recollects.
The stranger’s offhand comment gave life to a chance that Sakurai admits he had been avoiding on the time—that perhaps his dream would possibly discover wings and take flight on this impossible of settings. The couple and their three kids relocated to Heather’s hometown of Holbrook, a quiet northern desert metropolis of roughly 5,000.
Sakurai named his enterprise Arizona Sake and, in January 2017, started brewing the earliest batches in his storage. It didn’t take lengthy for him to appreciate that the dry local weather was an sudden present. “Tremendous dry means much less [risk of] contamination,” Sakurai explains. “That situation makes sake manufacturing very pure.”4 years on, Arizona Sake has collected a number of awards for its flagship Nama, a dry and barely candy Junmai Ginjo that Sakurai says carries notes of blueberry, pear, and peach, with a mildly bitter end. In 2018, the brewery gained the Tokyo Sake Competitors’s gold medal for sake made exterior of Japan. The next yr, the Los Angeles Worldwide Wine Competitors acknowledged Arizona Sake with one other gold medal within the “finest of sophistication” class. “It was nice—in spite of everything his arduous work, to be acknowledged,” says Heather.
In Japan, sake manufacturing is standardized by inflexible time-honored pointers that Sakurai needed to grasp as a way to receive his title of licensed first-grade sake brewer. At this time, he honors and adheres to those traditions whereas concurrently nudging their boundaries, infusing his creations with essences of his adopted nation by native water and premium Californian rice. One in all his brews even options Navajo tea, which is made by brewing the herb greenthread (Thelesperma) and generally loved by the Navajo Native American group, of which Heather and her household are members. When his father-in-law prompt incorporating the natural drink, Sakurai was instantly impressed by the concept of merging his ardour along with his spouse’s ancestral heritage. Making a brew with Navajo tea felt like the right strategy to pay homage to their life in Holbrook. “It grows on the Arizona soil, with Arizona sunshine,” Sakurai says. “It’s a condensation of Arizona, I feel.”
“He blended us collectively,” says Heather. “He took one thing from my tradition and put it along with his, and he made it style actually good.”
Arizona Sake is a part of a wave of small American-grown sake operations that, till latest years, had been roughly nonexistent. Now, many new breweries have opened up, placing their singular spins on the beverage. “We’re having an unimaginable time frame in sake brewing, the place persons are performing some actually wonderful, modern issues,” says Alyssa DiPasquale, proprietor and host of The Koji Club, a digital pop-up that curates sake and explores the tales behind the bottles. Brooklyn Kura in New York, for instance, dry-hops a Junmai Ginjo to provide a brew barely paying homage to an IPA. Ben’s American Sake in North Carolina sells sake blends in cans, incorporating elements like chai masala spices and juiced jalapeños.
“American brewers are actually experimental,” provides DiPasquale. “And the extra individuals who do it means the extra innovation.”
For Sakurai, that innovation should manifest from a basis of conventional procedures. His course of is an intricate enterprise that entails soaking and steaming rice, making ready koji (quite a lot of fungus that can be used to ferment soybeans for soy sauce and miso), and mixing each with yeast earlier than leaving the combination to ferment. It then will get pressed and filtered, bottled and labeled, and at last, shipped. From begin to end, every batch of 1,000 bottles takes Sakurai three months to provide. Most go to liquor shops and eating places—largely in Arizona, but additionally California, Hawaii, and Nebraska.“It was so crisp and so clear and fruit-forward,” says Kirsten McLaren, the supervisor of Wine & Rock Shop in California’s Yucca Valley, recalling her first style of Arizona Sake Nama. “All the pieces was harmonized and labored rather well collectively.”
Small enterprise homeowners are obsessed with supporting a fellow maker, particularly in Arizona. Cat Bunnag, chef and co-owner of Glai Baan, a Thai restaurant in Phoenix that options Sakurai’s sake on its menu, associated to Sakurai’s immigrant story of constructing a model from scratch; Glai Baan focuses on street-food dishes from Bunnag’s native Bangkok. She additionally beloved the flavour of his sake and its versatility for meals pairings. “You possibly can open one bottle, and have all these small plates and completely different flavors,” she says. “And nonetheless it’s actually good with virtually every thing.”
Maxwell Berlin, who runs the bar at Glai Baan, attributes sake’s obliging temperament to its nuanced and delicate style. “It has such a superbly crisp, delicate rice taste,” he says. Although diners may not count on to see sake on the drink menu at a Thai restaurant, Berlin notes that one meal normally convinces them of the pairing’s compatibility. The wide range of spicy, candy, and bitter aromas in Thai cooking name for a beverage like sake that’s “very refreshing and form of cleanses your palate,” he explains.
Amongst fans, sake’s means to seamlessly accommodate a broad vary of flavors and dishes is well-known. “Sake is basically supportive, an excellent cheerleader for meals,” says DiPasquale. Sakurai himself affords a pairing concept that will shock some: “I feel cheese is basically good with my sake,” he tells me.Sake exports to the U.S. have multiplied in the previous couple of years. Nevertheless, “breweries exterior of Japan are nonetheless very uncommon,” says Sakurai. The whole variety of sake breweries within the U.S. nonetheless hovers round simply 20. Novelty, although, isn’t the one issue drawing clients to attempt artisan sakes similar to Sakurai’s. The proliferation of craft brews and pure wine has additionally introduced into focus the creativity, diligence, and entrepreneurial spirit behind many small alcohol operations. Not solely are drinkers and distributors paying extra consideration to high quality of elements, today in addition they wish to know who’s producing the drinks.
It’s this private connection—attending to share his love of sake with new clients and to work with folks within the food-and-beverage business who supported his dream—that Sakurai enjoys most. Although Arizona Sake expanded right into a brewing facility close to his residence in 2019 and now ships out of state, most bottles can nonetheless solely be present in Arizona. He drives round to hand-distribute them to eating places, bars, and liquor shops, holding the sake chilled throughout the journey in well-insulated cooler bins he constructs by hand.
Sakurai doesn’t describe his work as creative or game-changing, nor does he dream of enlargement or business disruption. For him, adopting home components similar to rice from California and Navajo tea from Arizona merely ends in a extra attention-grabbing brewing expertise, in addition to a extra distinctive product that proudly wears its manufacturing locale on its sleeve. “If I get good rice from Japan, folks will say it’s good sake,” he explains. “However I wish to use U.S. supplies after which make good sake.”
Discovering unconventional inspiration in his new environment, Sakurai can be brewing a quiet dialogue, one which invitations folks of all cultural backgrounds to grow to be acquainted with the pleasures of the Japanese drink.
“[What drives him is] his love of sake, and realizing that his sake is used for celebration—like at weddings,” says Heather. “We’re in Holbrook. No one actually comes by. However now folks cease for Arizona Sake.”
