Founded in 1781, KOSHITSUKANO SHUZO has a charm of the traditional brewery lasting for 240 years.

History

KOSHITSUKANO SHUZO today is the amalgamation of two companies, TSUKANO SHUZO which took pride in their tradition, the other, KOSHI SHUZO in the techniques of sake production. In November in 1996 they merged to become “KOSHITSUKANO SHUZO” and started to produce sake and sell it in Suibarabunda.

“TSUKANO SHUZO” started in Bunda, in Suibara-machi, Kitakanbara-gun, Niigata, where the first head of the TSUKANO family, Jozaemon Yoshiteru Tsukano opened a shop named “Kawachi-ya”, which started brewing sake in 1781. “KOSHI SHUZO” started sake business at Shimami, former Toyosaka city in 1987, where they used to brew and sell only special designation sake such as Daiginjo-shu, Ginjo-shu, and Junmai-shu.

KOSHI SHUZO’s great accomplishment was that since the following autumn of its foundation it continued to win a prize at the Kanto-Shinetsu Sake Awards (held by the Kanto-Shinetsu Regional Taxation Bureau of the National Tax Agency of Japan) consecutively 17 times from the 47th till the 63rd.

The newly formed brewery KOSHITSUKANO won the Gold medal at the 85th Annual Japan Sake Awards in 1997.

Production Overview

• Yeast that lives in the brewery is called ‘House Yeast’ which only lives in that brewery. This yeast will have an effect on the Sake taste.
• Koshitsukano has very good ‘House Yeast’.
• Koshitsukano’s House Yeast has been recognised as very fine yeast so it gets cultured at Hiroshima Brewery Experimental Lab and has been named as ‘Hiroshima No5 Yeast’.
• This is used by many breweries, as generally, yeast will be added (Kyokai Yeast) by all brewery’s to brew Sake.
• Ryoichi Tanaka is the Toji or brew master at Koshitsukano Brewery.

Photo credit

Koshitsukano Sake

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