花の香酒造Hananoka Shuzo

The yeast that built the modern ginjo style was isolated in Kumamoto Prefecture in 1953. A researcher named Professor Kin'ichi Nojiro cultivated it at a prefectural institution that functioned as both brewery and laboratory, and when the Brewing Society of Japan began distributing it in 1968 as Kyokai No. 9, it spread to sake breweries across the country. Today it remains among the most widely used strains in ginjo production anywhere in Japan. Most breweries that use it have no particular connection to Kumamoto. That relationship runs only one direction.

Hananoka Shuzo is in Nagomi town, in Tamana County, inside the Kikuchi River basin shaped by Aso volcanic deposits laid down ninety thousand years ago. The brewery was founded in 1902 by Kakuji and Mosaku Kanda, who took over a rice field belonging to Myokenji Shrine and began brewing with spring water from within the shrine grounds. It operated as Kanda Shuzo for most of its history and took its current name, Hananoka, in 1992.

Kiyotaka Kanda, the sixth-generation head, returned to the brewery in 2014 after working outside the industry. He developed a new flagship brand called Ubusuna, a term from classical Japanese meaning the deity of one's birthplace, the guardian bound to the land where something comes into being. The word carries the concept of indigenous character, the idea that a thing belongs to where it was made. For Kanda, it became a working rule: every grain of rice used in Ubusuna is grown in the Kikuchi River basin, sharing the same volcanic soil and water system as the brewery itself. The fermentation runs on Kumamoto No. 9 yeast, the strain isolated elsewhere in this same prefecture in 1953 and now working in a Hananoka tank a short drive from where it was found.

The result is sake that describes its geography rather than gesturing at it. The Kikuchi basin rice, the Aso-filtered water, and the ancestral yeast fold into one another without requiring the consumer to know the backstory. But the backstory is there.

Key facts

• Founded 1902 as Kanda Shuzo in Nagomi town, Tamana County, Kumamoto Prefecture; renamed Hananoka Shuzo in 1992
• Sixth-generation head Kiyotaka Kanda returned in 2014 after working outside the industry
• Kumamoto (Kyokai No. 9) yeast: developed in 1953 by Professor Kin'ichi Nojiro at a Kumamoto prefectural research brewery; distributed nationally by the Brewing Society of Japan from 1968; now one of the most widely used ginjo yeasts in Japan
• Flagship brand Ubusuna: name means "guardian deity of one's birthplace" in classical Japanese; launched as the brewery's flagship terroir expression
• Domaine rule: all rice used in Ubusuna grown within the Kikuchi River basin, matching the brewery's own water system fed by Aso volcanic pyroclastic geology
• Location: Nagomi, Tamana County, on the Aso pyroclastic plateau; brewing water filtered through ninety-thousand-year-old volcanic deposits
• Production uses natural farming methods; rice varieties include Yamada Nishiki sourced from local paddies