宮城県

Miyagi

Rice paddies at Kozunai in Osato, seen from a hillside. Ripening paddies spread across the flat land toward a line of low hills, with leafy branches in the foreground and rippled clouds in the sky — Farmland in Osato Town. Rice fields, ready for harvest, stretch all the way to a line of low hills.石巻敎祖／ CC BY 4.0 ／ Wikimedia Commons（resized to 1280 px on the long side）

Sake in Miyagi

Miyagi Prefecture lies on the Pacific side of the Tohoku region of Honshu. The Miyagi Sake Brewers Association is made up of 24 sake breweries in the prefecture (as of September 2026). In November 1986, the association made the “Miyagi Junmai-shu Prefecture Declaration,” committing to making junmai-shu (sake made only from rice, rice koji and water) using only Miyagi's Sasanishiki rice. More than 90% of the sake shipped by breweries in the prefecture is “special designation sake” (tokutei meisho-shu), such as junmai-shu, ginjo-shu and honjozo-shu, which meets conditions on ingredients and rice polishing.

The oldest recorded sake brewing in Miyagi was begun in 1604 by Genzaemon Takeda of Watari as a town sake shop. In 1608, Date Masamune, founder of the Sendai Domain, invited sake-brewing craftsmen from Yamato (now Nara Prefecture) and had them open the domain's official sake shop south of the San-no-maru (third enclosure) of Sendai Castle (Aoba Castle). Today, most of the toji (master brewers) working at breweries in the prefecture are “Nanbu toji,” a group of toji from Iwate.

As for rice, the prefecture's first shuzo kotekimai (rice variety suited to sake brewing), “Kura no Hana,” became a recommended variety in 1997, and a second, “Gin no Iroha,” was added in 2020. The prefecture's Miyagi Prefectural Industrial Technology Institute holds “Miyagi My Yeast,” a yeast (the microorganism that carries out fermentation) widely used for making junmai-shu, and visits breweries in the prefecture in summer and winter to give technical guidance. The “Miyagi Prefecture Sake Competition” held by the association marked its 28th edition in fiscal 2026.

Brewery map

Breweries by municipality (dot size shows the number of breweries)Featured breweries

Niizawajozoten 新澤醸造店Osaki
Saura 佐浦Shiogama
Ichinokura 一ノ蔵Osaki

The 30 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

Niizawajozoten 新澤醸造店Hakurakusei 伯楽星OsakiRead the article
Ichinokura 一ノ蔵Ichinokura 一ノ蔵Osaki
Saura 佐浦Urakasumi 浦霞Shiogama