旭酒造Asahi Shuzo

Dassai's flagship is polished to 23% of the original grain. That means three-quarters of every kernel is milled away before fermentation begins, and reaching the ratio takes seven days of continuous grinding, 168 hours of rice spinning against stone. When Hiroshi Sakurai heard a competitor had reached 24%, he ran his machines an extra day to take the threshold for himself. No one had tried to sell sake at that level of polish commercially before.

Sakurai had not set out to win a milling contest. He took over Asahi Shuzo in 1984, in Yamaguchi Prefecture's mountainous Ato district, and inherited a brewery near collapse: sales of roughly ¥97 million, production of 126 kiloliters, and a traditional toji system that had broken down with no replacement arranged. The obvious move was to close. Instead he decided to make only premium sake, in a market where premium sake barely existed as a commercial category. He scrapped the seasonal toji structure entirely and put a year-round team of in-house brewers behind modern, temperature-controlled equipment. In the early 1990s he launched Dassai, named for the "otter festival," an old image of otters lining up their caught fish along the riverbanks of Yamaguchi.

The domestic market for this kind of sake was still thin. So Sakurai carried bottles to Paris, New York, and Milan himself, walking into Michelin-starred dining rooms and asking chefs to taste. In France, he found ears. Joël Robuchon was among the first to be won over. "I am in love with Dassai," he said. "It is the best sake I have ever tasted." In 2018, the year Robuchon died, the two had already opened Dassaï Joël Robuchon on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré: a three-story space pairing French cuisine with sake, a concept that would have been hard to explain in most Japanese sake conversations of the decade before. Yannick Alléno came later, opening his own Dassai izakaya in Paris in 2024.

By 2021, Dassai accounted for 17% of total sake exports out of Japan. The brewery runs at roughly 30,000 koku with 160 workers, the largest pure-premium sake operation in the country. In 2023, a New York brewery opened under the Dassai Blue label, the first time a Japanese sake brand had produced on American soil at this scale.

The Ato valley is still remote. Sakurai's son Kazuhiro now runs the company. The rice milling still takes seven days.

Key facts

• Asahi Shuzo founded 1948 in the Ato district of what is now Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture; Hiroshi Sakurai became third-generation president in 1984 when the brewery was near collapse
• Launched the Dassai brand in the early 1990s; flagship Dassai 23 polishes rice to 23% of original size, requiring 168 hours (7 days) of continuous milling, the highest polishing ratio commercially attempted at launch
• Abolished the traditional seasonal toji system; year-round in-house brewers operate modern, temperature-controlled facilities
• Hiroshi Sakurai personally carried bottles to Paris, New York, and Milan; Joël Robuchon was an early French champion, calling Dassai "the best sake I have ever tasted"; Yannick Alléno opened his own Dassai izakaya in Paris later, in 2024
• 2018: Dassai Joël Robuchon opened in Paris's 8th arrondissement, a three-story sake-and-French-cuisine venue
• By 2021, Dassai represented 17% of all sake exported from Japan; current production approximately 30,000 koku with 160 brewery workers
• Dassai Blue brewery opened in Hudson Valley, New York, 2023; first major Japanese sake brand to brew on American soil