Fukushima

Sake in Fukushima

Fukushima Prefecture lies at the southern end of the Tohoku region and is made up of three areas: Hamadori, Nakadori and Aizu. In the one year from July 2024 to June 2025, sake was made at 54 places in the prefecture, the most after Niigata, Nagano and Hyogo prefectures. Under the geographical indication (GI) system, which protects the names of sake-producing regions, “Minamiaizu” was designated in August 2024 and “Kitakata” in December of the same year. Both cover “junmai-shu,” sake made only from rice, rice koji and water, using the rice and water of that area.

The two production areas are in the mountains of the snowy Aizu region. Minamiaizu gets more than 9 m of snow a year, providing plenty of soft water with few dissolved minerals. In winter the snow wraps around the breweries and acts as insulation, keeping the temperature inside constant. In Kitakata, snow that piles up on the mountains surrounding it on three sides soaks into the layers of earth and becomes very soft underground water.

“Yume no Kaori,” a rice variety suited to sake brewing (shuzo kotekimai), was crossed in 1991 at the Fukushima Agricultural Experiment Station. In the same year, 1991, the Fukushima Technology Centre Aizuwakamatsu Technical Support Center, a prefectural research institution, completed the yeast (the microorganism that carries out fermentation) “Utsukushima Yume Yeast.” At the Zenkoku Shinshu Kanpyokai (National New Sake Competition), Fukushima once ranked first among prefectures in the number of gold awards nine times in a row, and in the results announced in May 2026 it ranked first for the second year in a row.

Brewery map

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