熊本県
Kumamoto
Sake in Kumamoto
Kumamoto Prefecture lies almost in the middle of Kyushu, with Mount Aso rising to the northeast, and faces the Ariake Sea and the Yatsushiro Sea to the west. In the one year from July 2024 to June 2025, sake was made at 8 places in the prefecture. The Hitoyoshi and Kuma area in the south produces shochu made from rice, and in June 1995 “Kuma” was designated under the geographical indication (GI) system, which protects the names of shochu-producing regions. Its conditions include using only domestically grown rice and rice koji and water drawn in Kuma District or Hitoyoshi City, and carrying out fermentation and distillation in that area.
Kumamoto is a land blessed with water. Between about 270,000 and about 90,000 years ago, Mount Aso had four large pyroclastic-flow eruptions, and the deposited flows formed the land of Kumamoto. Rain easily soaks into these porous layers, and plentiful water is stored underground. Kumamoto City supplies all of its residents' tap water from groundwater. Outside the Aso area the climate is mild, with an average annual temperature of 15 to 17°C.
The person who greatly raised the quality of Kumamoto sake was Kinichi Nojiro, an engineer transferred to the Kumamoto Tax Supervision Bureau in 1903. He traveled around the prefecture teaching sake brewing, and in 1909 he worked hard to establish the Kumamoto Prefecture Sake Research Institute. In 1910 he devised the “Nojiro-style skylight,” which helps ventilate and control the temperature of the koji-muro (the room for making rice koji), and established a method of ginjo brewing (polishing away the outer 40% or more of the rice grain and fermenting it slowly at low temperatures) that works even in warm Kyushu. In 1922 the institute built a brewery and began making sake under the name “Koro.” Around 1952, “Kumamoto yeast,” suited to ginjo brewing, emerged from the institute's moromi (the fermenting mash that becomes sake) (yeast is the microorganism that carries out fermentation), and from 1968 it has been distributed nationwide as the Brewing Society of Japan's “Kyokai No. 9.”
Brewery map
Breweries by municipality (dot size shows the number of breweries)Featured breweries
- Hananoka Shuzo 花の香酒造Nagomi
The 11 breweries on our list are grouped by the municipality where they are located. Each dot marks a representative point of the municipality, not the brewery itself (featured breweries are shown at their actual locations). Locations are based on the address search of the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan.
Featured breweries
- Hananoka Shuzo 花の香酒造Hananoka 花の香NagomiRead the article