
Boncho Tsuru Junmai Daiginjo Yamada Nishiki
Yamagata Main Branch | Yamaguchi Prefecture
Yamagata main store
Yamagata Honten in Shunan City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, will celebrate its 2025th anniversary in 150. While preserving tradition, the company never lets up on its strong desire to make even better sake.
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Located about a 10-minute drive from JR Tokuyama Station in Shunan City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Yamagata Honten is a historic sake brewery that began brewing in 1875 (Meiji 8) and will celebrate its 2025th anniversary in 150. The brewery's ancestors were vassals of the famous Mori clan, and their sake "Mori-ko" (Mori-ko) is a best-selling brand.
In the mid-1970s, when sake consumption began to decline and people began to move away from sake, they developed a new type of fruity unpasteurized sake that could be enjoyed cold and was popular with young people and women, and launched "Kahori." Even today, "Kahori" remains one of their signature brands, and they are pioneers of the unpasteurized sake boom that continues to this day. In 2019, they made a long-awaited comeback with "Bocho Tsuru," a brand that was in use at the time of their founding. They are not afraid to evolve while still protecting their traditions.
The goal of the chief brewer is to "brew beautiful sake." Every year, he continues to update his sake with the feeling of "making better sake than last year." In recent years, he has revived the "Bocho Tsuru" brand, which was an icon at the time of the company's founding, and it is still fresh in our memory that he has given it a beautiful makeover, but big updates are not everything. He does not cut corners in any of the sake brewing processes, and he takes good care of the brewery and tools. He is particular about carefully attending to his daily tasks in order to produce better sake.
The brewery is particular about the local nature. The brewing water is natural water that is made by filtering blessed rain through the strata of the mountains of the Chugoku Mountains. The rice used is "Yamada Nishiki" from Yamaguchi Prefecture and the prefecture's original sake rice "Saito no Shizuku."
Some of the products of "Bochotsuru" use Yamada Nishiki rice from contracted farmers who grow rice in a way that is kind to the vines and the environment in the rice fields of the Yatsushiro Basin, where the brand's icon, the Hooded Crane, flies. The sake brewed using this rice is made in the traditional "Winter Brewing" method.
Sake is brewed in the cold season, and when the seasons change and brewing is finished, plum wine is made by soaking plums from Yamaguchi Prefecture in rice shochu, and in the fall, potato shochu is made from sweet potatoes also grown in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Not only sake, but a variety of other alcoholic drinks are made while being conscious of the natural cycle of plants and living things and feeling the scents of the seasons.
Yamagata Honten is constantly thinking about "what should remain unchanged and what needs to be changed," and is carving out a path to the future with an excellent sense of balance. The new "Bocho Tsuru" is truly innovative in both label and flavor, and will continue to produce sake that fits the "modern era" while never forgetting to respect its predecessors.