Sempuku Shinriki "85" Junmai Kimoto Muroka Genshu
- In stock, ready to ship
At 19% ABV, it's nothing to sniff at-- this is a contemplative sipper, delightful cool, room temp or gently warmed (serve in a shallow hirahai to mellow out the alcohol vapors).
(also spelled Senpuku)!
Brewery: Miyake Honten, 三宅本店
Established 1856
Location: Kure, HIroshima
Rice: Shinriki
Polish: 85%
Starter method: Kimoto
Awards: Japan National Kanzake Contest- Premium Kanzake Category Gold Award (2019)
Shinriki or "divine power rice" was thought to be extinct since the 1910-20s. In 2006, Sempuku-- a brewery that specializes in different varieties of rice-- was able to resurrect Shinriki using approximately 5g of seeds its staff found in storage. Applying the production methods of the 1910s when the Shinriki variety was last in wide production, Shinriki 85 is produced via the kimoto method and is neither charcoal filtered nor diluted.
Well-known in Japan for catchy commercials, Miyake Honten began in Kure, Hiroshima, a Navy base town at the time, under the name Kawachi-ya in 1856. The company originally produced mirin (a sweet sake used in cooking), shōchū, and shiro-zake (a sweet white sake), before beginning sake production in 1902. In the late 1920s, their products were given the honor to be put aboard Japanese naval ships as official military-use sake, and Miyake Honten prospered as one of the largest sake breweries in all of Japan.
In 1945, they lost nearly all of their facilities to air raids. Of the five original breweries, sake production is now carried out in the remaining two: the Gohō-gura and Azuma-gura breweries.
The Azuma-gura mainly produces affordable sake for mass consumption, while the Gohō-gura brewery exclusively brews sake with Shinriki rice, an extremely rare cultivar of rice which the brewery was able to successfully bring to harvest. This sake was produced at Goho-gura.
Since their founding, Miyake Honten has put their painstaking and loving devotion to the craft of sake brewing into each drop of their sake under the continuing philosophy of their founder: "complete harmony and whole-hearted sincerity."
