Breweries Closing, Exports Rising: Inside the Sake Industry Decline
Japan had 1,104 working sake breweries in BY2024 and record exports in 2025. Both are true. Here is what the National Tax Agency numbers actually show.
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Who Is the Toji? Inside the Role of Sake’s Master Brewer
The toji is a sake brewery’s chief brewer — and, until recently, a seasonal contractor who arrived each winter with his own crew. What the role really is.
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Niigata Sake: How Snow Country Made Japan’s Lightest, Driest Style
Niigata sake is Japan’s lightest, driest style. How snow, soft water and a 1980s decision aimed at Tokyo created tanrei karakuchi.
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Why Is Sake Filtered, and What Does Muroka Change?
Muroka means a sake skipped activated-carbon filtration, not that it was never filtered. What charcoal removes, what it costs, what the label means.
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Does Sake Really Cause Worse Hangovers?
No evidence says sake causes worse hangovers than wine. The research points to dose — and to the fact that sake arrives in cups nobody can count.
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Does Glassware Change How Sake Tastes?
Glass shape really does change what reaches your nose, but not for the reason the marketing says. A sniffer-camera study on ethanol vapour, and why the small cup is not a lesser choice.
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2026 National Kanzake Contest: A Record Field, and a Wider Definition of Warm Sake
Japan’s only competition dedicated entirely to sake served warm, the National Kanzake Contest (全国燗酒コンテスト), held its 17th judging on August 4, 2026 — and this year’s results point to a real shift in how the category is being defined. The numbers 227 breweries submitted 971 entries this year, judged blind by a panel of 54…
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How to Warm Sake at Home Without Ruining It
Warm sake in a water bath off the boil, aiming for about 40C. The usual failure is overheating, not the method – and the microwave is not the villain.
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Where to Drink Serious Sake in London: Six Spots Worth Seeking Out
London’s serious sake scene doesn’t sit in one walkable cluster — it runs from a working brewery under a railway arch near London Bridge to a Michelin-starred kaiseki room in Mayfair, by way of a bottle shop with its own bar in Covent Garden. That spread says something: sake here is still a specialist pursuit,…
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Where to Drink Serious Sake in the East Village, NYC: Six Spots Worth Seeking Out
The East Village was Manhattan’s working-class Lower East Side spillover before it became the city’s countercultural engine room — punk clubs, poets, and the kind of cheap rent that let a neighbourhood get weird for a few decades. Some of that rent is gone, but the low-key, do-your-own-thing character stuck around, and it shows in…
