Great Craft Sake Made In America: A Family Farm In Arkansas Is The Force Behind It

Sake doesn’t belong only to Japanese restaurants anymore.

Two Michelin-starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, one of the most celebrated American restaurants, serves sake on its tasting menu.

Furthermore, the sake is made locally by Brooklyn Kura, the first craft sake brewery in New York, which was founded in 2017.

“We always have Brooklyn Kura Blue Door Junmai Sake in our cellar. We love having Brooklyn Kura around to pour for pairings and any guest who is looking for an alternative to wine,” says beverage director Hannah Williams.

Blue Hill in Manhattan, which has a Michelin star, also serves Brooklyn Kura’s Number Fourteen Junmai Ginjo by the glass to pair it with various dishes, such as fluke crudo with hakurei turnip and striped bass with sour cherry and pickled plum. In addition, the restaurant features the sake in a cocktail called the Sansho Smash, which is made with whisky, sake, cucumber, sansho and lime.

Brooklyn Kura is not the only American sake that can match up to the quality of beverage items on top restaurants’ menus.

Currently, there are 27 craft sake breweries in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, according to the Sake Brewers Association in North America. 10 out of these 27 breweries were founded in or after 2020, indicating the speed of the growth is accelerating rapidly.

What is the force behind the growth of the American sake industry?

First, Japanese sake has become more familiar to Americans through the popularity of Japanese food over the last few decades.

Secondly, the Japanese sake industry found an overseas path to survive. Despite its 2000-year-old tradition with ever-refining quality, Japanese sake has been losing its domestic consumers where sake consumption peaked in 1973. Due to the influx of competitive products like wine and craft beer, labor shortage and the shrinking population, the number of operating sake breweries is about a third of those in the 1970s.

Then comes the fluke: the steep surge of demand from abroad. The sake export by value has quadrupled over the last 10 years and higher-quality sake is more readily available to Americans. In the boom of craft beer brewing nationwide, some of them got inspired to brew their own sake.

Thirdly and importantly, there are quality rice suppliers in the U.S. now.

While sake can be made with table rice, Japanese sake brewers use sake rice, or sakamai, which was specifically developed to make premium sake.

Unlike regular table sushi rice, sake rice has a different structure in its grains: the larger portion of the starch in the middle makes the fermentation process smooth and efficient; its lower percentage of protein and fat enables the sake to express the pure flavors of the precious rice. Also, the grains are sturdier to survive the harsh milling process, which can go down to 30% or less of the original size.

However, if you are a start-up craft sake brewer, it is too expensive to import sake rice all the way from Japan. Most craft breweries have opted for cost-effective local rice varieties such as Calrose.

By the way, Calrose was developed in California in 1948 as table rice but it shares the same parent as the super-premium sake rice Yamadanishiki. That is why American sake breweries still have managed to produce high-quality sake over the last decades.

As the American sake industry develops further, the demand for premium sake rice has been increasing. Who is responding?

Meet Isbell Farms in Arkansas.

Sake Rice Grown In American Terroir

Isbell Farms is a multi-generational family farm and the first American sake rice grower.

Isbell’s sake rice production originated from Chris Isbell’s odd encounter with a Japanese agricultural scientist in the early 1990s. At a conference, he had a conversation about the prized Japanese table rice variety Koshihikari with the scientist who told him it could be grown only in Japan. Chris went home and thought that, since Arkansas was in the same latitude as Japanese rice-producing regions, why not? He decided to experiment.

The rice was grown successfully and surprised people in Japan. Many Japanese media outlets visited Isbell Farms and the rice was even exported to Japan, which was quickly sold out.

“I guess my curiosity and stubbornness initiated our farms’ long-term connections with Japanese rice,” Chris laughs.

Currently, Isbell Farms produces several traditional sake rice, including Yamadanishiki, Omachi and Goyakumangoku. Sake rice accounts for 10-15% of its total revenue with a 15-20% annual growth.

Isbell used to outsource the rice milling process, but it started polishing sake rice last year. “We are a sustainable farm. It makes sense to eliminate transporting rice to distant milling facilities,” says Chris’ son Mark Isbell.

Polishing sake rice is highly technical but when Isbell bought a milling machine from Japan, the manufacturer’s technician came with the delivery to fully train Chris and Mark.

Quality Tested: The Verdict?

Isbell Farms’ clients include Brooklyn Kura and the newly opened Dassai Blue in New York. Its parent brand Dassai by Asahi Shuzo, exported 15% of the total sake made in Japan last year—an impressively high figure as a single brewer among around 1,000 in the country. Dassai Blue opened its first brewery overseas in New York in September 2023.

Dassai is known for its meticulous quality control and Dassai Blue’s sake rice must meet its highest standards.

Kazuhiro Sakurai, the fourth-generation president of Asahi Shuzo says, “Sake rice is heavily affected by the climate condition each year. Because of the extremely high temperature in Arkansas in 2023, Isbell’s rice was a little harder to dissolve than we wished. So we had to control the various aspects of fermentation even more strictly but in the end, we were able to make a clear, elegant style of sake.”

Is American sake rice good enough to produce quality sake?

“At this point, compared to the sake rice from Japan, there is more uncertainty in American sake rice, of course. Japanese farmers have spent centuries to perfect the quality,“ says Sakurai.

“But we came to America to brew sake that fully expresses the American terroir. We want to produce great American craft sake with passionate, experienced growers like Isbell Farms. It is inspiring that Isbell Farms is relentlessly trying to produce better rice. I am very hopeful about the future of American sake rice.”

Brian Polen, co-founder of Brooklyn Kura, also says, “We have no doubts about the future of American sake rice. Sake rice growers with profound knowledge, experience and sophisticated skills like Isbell Farms will be an essential part of the American sake industry.”

There are other sake rice purveyors that mill sake rice produced by reliable farmers, such as Valley Select Ingredients, Iida Group and Minnesota Rice and Milling.

With a solid supply of high-quality sake rice, we can expect the sake industry to thrive further in America.

Then—can sake become a favorite beverage of America like wine?

You never know.

According to the Wine Institute, Americans now drink 1,100% more wine than 90 years ago. And remember—Americans used to shudder at the thought of eating raw fish only a short while ago.