Webmaster visited Ichishima Sake Brewery in Shibata City last week. This brewery was founded in 1790.
Access: Tokyo (shinkansen 2:15) Niigata (express train 0:23) Shibata (walk 0:10) @
If you are not a large group with more than ten persons, reservation is not required.
They have three exhibition rooms for touristic visitors.
The first room Toji-gura shows us old equipment of brewing sake.
According to the brewery staff, those wooden tubs for fermenting materials were used until 1960’s. Now metal tubs are used for the purpose.
You can compare the size of the tub with a vending machine.
The second room exhibits some historical collections of the brewery.
The third room shows us the collection of table wares for eating and drinking sake. They are fine craft arts.
We are not allowed to go into the factory, but can see the fermentation tanks and bottling line from the distance. Since it was out of a brewing season, the factory was not busy.
At the end of the visit, Webmaster had tasting of seven kinds of sake of the brewery at one corner of the shop. Of course you can buy your favorite ones at the shop.
There are some fifteen hundred sake breweries in Japan. Some sake breweries (not all) offer brewery tour for touristic visitors. If you have a chance to visit countryside of Japan, please visit some sake brewery for experiencing Japanese culture and taste.
Country-Japan will provide the information of sake brewery tour in due course.
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