Wine, Beer, Sake, Whiskey Blog at MoIppai » Japan

Sennenichi Sake Brewery, Awaji Island, Japan

MoIppai — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:00:24 +0000

On a recent trip to Awajishima (Awaji island, a tiny island inbetween Honshu and Shikoku, just off the coast of Kobe), we stopped in at the local sake brewery Sennenichi to pick up a bottle of the local brew to take home.

Sennenichi Sake Brewery

We were greeted very warmly and were very quickly invited for a mini-tour of the brewery by the extremely friendly owner.
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Read the rest of Sennenichi Sake Brewery, Awaji Island, Japan (398 words)

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Post tags: Japan, Japanese Breweries, Nihonshu, Sake, Sake Brewery

Godzilla Sake

MoIppai — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 03:22:18 +0000

As well as having more than a passing interest in booze, I’m also quite keen on the Godzilla and other Toho Monster movies, and it’s not often these two worlds come together.

So I was very excited to read about Konishi Brewing Company releasing a Special Edition Shirayuki barley Shochu in a Godzilla pottery bottle!

Godzilla Bottle

Apparently the brewery were approached by Toho Co Ltd (makers of the Godzilla movies) to think of ways of celebrating 55 years since Godzilla’s birth (the first screening of the original Godzilla movie was in November 1954).

Konishi decided to release their special shochu in a pottery bottle based on the Godzilla from the 1989 movie “Godzilla vs Biollante“. (The Godzilla monster design changes every few films).

Unfortunately, although they’re calling it SAKE Godzilla (SAKE ゴジラ), it’s actually shochu not sake.
I prefer sake – shochu gives me killer hangovers – but in Japanese “sake” is actually “alcohol“, not what English speakers call sake (the rice wine). In Japanese that is “Nihonshu” (although people do say sake in Japanese for nihonshu sometimes so it can get a bit confusing at times).

Godzilla Sake

The bottle was designed by the artist Nariaki Ito and Koichi Kawakita who directed six of the recent Godzilla movies, and was made by a famous Japanese pottery maker Kanekoh Ceramic Corporation.

Kudos for Konishi Brewing for having a go at releasing an English press release for this too, although I have a feeling the translation was done by babelfish or Google translate, as it contains some great phrases like

Delight to get drunk and become enthusiastic on Godzilla this evening

Godzilla-shaped pottery bottle also produce to respect a sense of such mind after drinking.

Although I’m glad they tried, as I wouldn’t have been able to find out any of the facts I’ve just written about!

The shochu is a 100% barley shochu made with water from Rokko Mountain apparently, and although I don’t really like shochu, I couldn’t miss out on an item like this, so one of the 3000 limited editions is winging it’s way to me as we speak!
A bit pricey at ¥10,500 ($100), but hey, it’s a Godzilla bottle!

More information can be found on their website here. (Although it’s all in Japanese except the afore mentioned English press release).

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Beaujolais Nouveau 2011

MoIppai — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:54:57 +0000

It’s coming up to that Beaujolais Nouveau time of the year again, and due to time differences Japan always gets it first, and is probably the only country that still gets excited about it.

The convenience stores have pre-order flyers so you can make sure you get yours as soon as possible.

Beaujolais Nouveau 2011

My boss always gets everyone 2 bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau each year, and hopefully this year won’t be any different.

Mind you, I wasn’t very impressed with last years wine, so fingers crossed it’s better in 2011.

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Sake at the Nishinomiya Ebisu Festival, Japan

MoIppai — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 05:43:29 +0000

Every year during the second weekend in January there’s a long Bank Holiday weekend, as we would say in England, and this co-incides with the Ebisu Shinto Shrine festivals held around Japan. People go to the shrines to buy fukusasa, which are lucky charms for businesses in the coming year.

Just up the road from us in Nishinomiya city is one of the biggest festivals with around 1 million visitors expected over the three days this year.

Crowds at the Festival

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Read the rest of Sake at the Nishinomiya Ebisu Festival, Japan (177 words)

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Post tags: Japan, Matsuri, Nishinomiya, Sake

Four Roses Whiskey Highball from Kirin

MoIppai — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 02:02:24 +0000

The highball craze in Japan continues unabated with Kirin Brewery just announcing the launch of two new highball cans on November 17th this year.

Four Roses Highball and I.W. Harper Highball.

Most highballs in Japan use Suntory whiskey it seems, so this is the first to use Kentucky whiskey.

Suntory themselves have re-released, after a 43-year absence, a canned high-ball made from the company’s Tory’s Whiskey.

Torys Whiskey Brand Character

They’ve also brought back the old advertisings brand character Uncle Tory (above), this is to appeal to middle-aged and older people who remember the character from back in the day, according to the Daily Yomiuri.

The Four Roses and I.W. Harper Highballs aren’t released until mid-November so I haven’t been able to try them yet (or find a photo of them), but will come back and update this when I have.