Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/314991
{ SOMMjournal.com } 71 It's a cold January day, and the rice fields that fill every available square inch of land between the roads and houses in Okayama, the Japanese prefecture an hour-and-a-half flight south of Tokyo, are nothing more than patches of rich, dark earth and tidy rows of neatly mown stubble. It's brewing season and the energy of saké producers has shifted from the fields to the timber-lined breweries, where millions of grains of rice are making the some- what mystical transition from an agricultural product to the nation's staple alcoholic beverage. Riding the sushi craze and all things tempura, saké imports and consumption in the U.S. has increased astronomically over the past 20 years, according to Takara, a company that has been brew- ing saké for nearly two centuries in Japan and now serves as the largest saké company in the U.S. Furthering its mission of bringing high-quality nihonshu (the Japanese word for saké) to the American people, Takara Sake USA began brewing in Berkeley using snow melt from the Sierra Nevada mountain range and rice from the Sacramento Valley in the early 1980s. To See the World in a of Rice PHOTO COPYRIGHT©TONY MCNICOL by Courtney Humiston ➔ Somm Journal June/July.indd 71 5/9/14 12:10 PM