赤武酒造Akabu Shuzo

On March 11, 2011, the tsunami took everything. The brewery building, the production equipment, the family home — gone. Akabu Shuzo had been making sake in Otsuchi, a small fishing town on Iwate's Sanriku coast, since 1896. Buhei Furudate had founded it in the Akahama district overlooking Otsuchi Bay, and the brewery had taken its name from that place. Their main brand, Hamamusume, had served local fishermen for generations. The tsunami didn't distinguish.

President Hidemine Furudate considered closing. Then brewers and fans who had been drinking Hamamusume all their lives asked him not to. Within months, Sakuraface Shuzo in Morioka offered space and equipment. Brewing resumed in the fall of 2011. By the end of 2013 a new facility in Morioka was complete. The Furudates called it the Resurrection Brewery, and the name was not a metaphor.

The move to Morioka forced a clean break. The Otsuchi brewers who had run the old kura could not follow the brewery inland, so it staffed up almost from scratch, hiring people mostly in their twenties and thirties with little fixed idea of how the place had always done things. Hidemine's son Ryunosuke had been studying fermentation science at Tokyo University of Agriculture and winning student sake competitions there. He came home to Morioka at 22 and took the job of toji, young even by the standards of a young crew. The brand AKABU launched in December 2014, aimed at drinkers his own age who had grown up without much attachment to sake.

Ryunosuke's brewing draws on Iwate's Nanbu Toji tradition while layering in modern microbiology. The flagship rice is Ginga, an Iwate variety prized for the clean flavor it produces; the primary yeast is Giovanni no Chikara, which yields a low-alcohol ginjo aroma with an apple-like character. At SAKE COMPETITION 2016, AKABU won gold in the junmai ginjo category, and in 2017 it took the Iwate Prefectural Governor's Award. AKABU now accounts for more than 90% of the brewery's output, shipped almost entirely outside the prefecture.

The original Hamamusume still exists. It still bears the name of a seaside town where the brewery no longer stands.

Key facts

• Founded 1896 by Buhei Furudate in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, on Sanriku coast
• Brewery destroyed by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake tsunami; rebuilt in Morioka City by 2013
• Temporarily brewed at Sakuraface Shuzo, Morioka, in fall 2011
• AKABU brand launched December 2014 by toji Ryunosuke Furudate, then 22 years old
• Primary rice: Ginga (Iwate); primary yeast: Giovanni no Chikara
• SAKE COMPETITION gold in junmai ginjo (2016); Iwate Prefectural Governor's Award (2017)
• Over 90% of output now under the AKABU label, distributed nationwide