The Yamada Nishiki strain of rice is renowned for yielding quality Junmai and Junmai Ginjyo ranked sake. Because of the rigorous standards the rice must meet, this strain is developed in explicit accordance with the land and region in which it is grown.

At Kitaya, we primarily use the Yamada Nishiki strains, supplied by JA Itoshima contracted farmers, and the Gin no Sato strains from JA Fukuoka Yame contracted farmers.

The Yamada Nishiki strains from Hyogo Prefecture have long been pervasively considered the best sake grain, by both distributors and consumers. Since winning the Champion Sake Trophy, locals have been excited that Fukuoka Prefecture’s Yamada Nishiki strain has also been recognized as one of the best.

The ears of rice are long and each grain is large, making it susceptible to strong winds and especially hard to grow. This limits where the grain of rice can be cultivated, thus the majority of Fukuoka Prefecture’s Yamada Nishiki is grown in Itoshima.

Itoshima’s Yamada Nishiki
Top-left – Unpolished Rice Top-right – Polished down to 60%
Bottom-left – Polished down to 50% Bottom-right – Polished down to 35%

The flavor and scent of the sake varies depending on the extent that the rice is polished.

We would like to start by thanking Mr. Ichiro Yasuda, Chairman of the JA Itoshima Sake Rice Division, and everyone involved in cultivating the best Yamada Nishiki rice for sake. Breweries in Fukuoka are proud to use Itoshima’s Yamada Nishiki.

Blessed by Itoshima’s favorable weather and soil, the farmers of Itoshima have dedicated their efforts with meticulous care. Ever improving the quality of their rice, the results are a crop perfectly suited for sake brewing.

Reaching the pinnacle of sake would not have been possible without the wondrous quality of Itoshima’s Yamada Nishiki. We dedicate ourselves to giving back to the farmers and the local community and economy by showing the world the wonders of Fukuoka.

Our local community, Yame, does not have much of a history in raising Shuzo Kotekimai (high-grade rice of brewing quality). In order to contribute to our local community’s economy through our growing purchasing needs, we decided it was necessary to commission the production of Shuzo Kotekimai to the Yame Region.

Furthermore, being friendly with and personally getting to know the farmers adds a certain level of comfort in producing high-quality rice because of the sincere trust we build in our business relationship. To ensure that our efforts to produce rice for sake does not jeopardize the production, demand, and pricing of edible rice, we worked with JA Fukuoka Yame insuring that the benefits of this increase in production pervade the entire community.

Using Kitaya’s experimental crop field and the employees’ crop field, we cultivated an experimental strain of rice in 2006. That rice was then used to make the 55% polished Junmai and the 50% polished Junmai Daiginjyo experimental sakes.

The results of this endeavor were of such high quality that we began the search for a farmer within the JA Fukuoka Yame region to grow this crop the following year. At the time, the project was codenamed “Saikaishu No. 255” (Western Sea Sake).

In the fall of 2007, “Gin no Sato” was registered as a new strain of rice. “Gin no Sato”, appropriately meaning the “roots of Gin”, was birthed from the dream that a rice perfect for Ginjyo sake would take root in the local community. Year by year, from 2007 to 2010, the production grew from 3 households cultivating 1 hectare, to 7 households cultivating 4 hectares, to 8 households cultivating 6.8 hectares, to finally 8 households cultivating 8.1 hectares

Finally, in 2010, the JA Fukuoka Yame recognized and registered the Gin no Sato strain of rice as a Shuzo Kotekimai (high-grade rice of brewing quality). Since then, production has rapidly grown from 13 households cultivating 11.3 hectares in 2011, to 22 households cultivating 17 hectares in 2012, and 26 households cultivating 21.5 hectares in 2013.

The Gin no Sato rice crop meets the ideal quality for Junmai and Junmai Ginjyo sake, all while still allowing breweries to stay cost competitive. The farmers are similarly overjoyed that their revenues have increased.

The farmers growing this strain of rice formed the “Gin no Sato Rice for Brewing Sake Research Committee” in 2011 to improve cultivation techniques and better the quality of the rice.
“Gin no Sato Rice for Brewing Sake Research Committee” Chairman Hidenori Nakashima, pictured left.

The ideal increment by which to scale the production of this rice is a single grain elevator dryer. In terms of unpolished (raw/brown) rice, it is equivalent to 300 tons of rice that requires 40 hectares of land to grow.

To make this wish a reality, we are dedicated to making Yame’s Gin no Sato strain as widely recognized as Itoshima’s Yamada Nishiki strain of Shuzo Kotekimai (rice qualified for sake brewing)