Juyondai

Takagi Shuzo has brewed in Murayama, Yamagata, since 1615, in a basin that fills with snow and meltwater from the Dewa mountains. The house name Tatsugoro is passed from generation to generation.

Juyondai — literally “fourteenth generation” — is the modern face of that house. The trademark was registered by the fourteenth-generation head; the sake that made the name famous was shaped in the 1990s by Akitsuna Takagi, now the fifteenth generation, who turned away from the light-and-dry fashion of the time toward a rounder, more aromatic glass.

The brewery still works with Yamagata’s climate: long winters, clear water, and rice they have spent years matching to local paddies. Allocations are small. On the KOKOMII shelf now: Hizoshu, Kamishiro nakadori in Aiyama, Akaiwa Omachi, Yamada Nishiki, and Ryu no Otoshigo, plus Ryugetsu in 1.8 L, Kuroawa, Sokoh, Daigokujyo Extra, and the nama reprint of Ryu no Otoshigo.