Fukushima Sake: Thirty Years That Began with Zero Gold Medals

Today Fukushima is practically shorthand for “most gold medals in Japan,” but its starting point was the exact opposite.

At the 1990 Annual Japan Sake Awards, not one brewery from Fukushima Prefecture took home a gold medal.

What Fukushima did next was a little unlike what other prefectures would have done. It did not invest in equipment, and it did not buy advertising. It built a school.

The Yardstick: The Annual Japan Sake Awards

Before going further, it is worth establishing what this competition actually is.

The Annual Japan Sake Awards are co-hosted by the National Research Institute of Brewing and the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association, and they evaluate the quality of sake brewed that year. The competition dates back to 1911 (Meiji 44), and it has continued ever since with the aim of raising the quality and technical standards of sake.

Entries are generally daiginjo-class sake, which makes the competition a test of everything a brewery can technically muster. Among the entries that place, the very best are awarded gold medals, and the gold medal count by prefecture is widely cited as an indicator of a region’s technical level.

By that yardstick, Fukushima scored zero in 1990.

The Answer Was a School

In 1992, the Fukushima Sake Brewers Association established the Fukushima Sake Academy Vocational Training School.

The goal was to train local toji and technicians capable of brewing ginjo sake in-house. Its three-year curriculum covers everything from classroom study to hands-on brewing practice in a systematic way. The heirs to breweries across the prefecture gathered there.

The school’s single greatest effect, it is said, was not the curriculum itself but the fact that technique left the walls of the individual brewery. Until then, brewing know-how had been each brewery’s closely guarded property, not something to be taught to a rival. By putting everyone in the same classroom, experience and failure alike began to be shared across the prefecture.

Instruction also comes from the engineers at the Fukushima Technology Centre Aizu-Wakamatsu Technical Support Center, the prefecture’s own research institute. The result was a structure in which a research institute, an industry body, and the individual breweries all met in the same room.

Rather than letting one virtuoso rise above the rest, the goal was to lift the average across the whole prefecture. That was the path Fukushima chose.

Growing Its Own Yeast and Rice

Running in parallel with training people was the development of raw materials and microorganisms.

Utsukushima Yume Yeast (F7-01) was developed by the brewing and food science division of the Fukushima Technology Centre Aizu-Wakamatsu Technical Support Center over a four-year research project that began in 1988 (Showa 63), and it was completed in 1991 (Heisei 3) as Fukushima’s first original yeast. It produces fruity aromas while keeping acidity in check, yielding a mild finish.

On the rice side there is Yume no Ka. Aiming for a high-quality sake rice to succeed Gohyakumangoku, the prefectural agricultural experiment station bred it in 1991 (Heisei 3) by crossing Hattan Nishiki No.1 as the mother with Yamagata Sake No.49 as the father, producing Fukushima’s first original sake-brewing rice variety.

A yeast that generates aroma, and a rice that can carry it. Technicians trained by the prefecture’s research institute brewing with raw materials the prefecture had bred — that cycle became Fukushima’s foundation from the 1990s onward.

Nine Consecutive Titles

It took a fair amount of time for the results to show up in the numbers.

Fukushima Prefecture first took the top spot in gold medals by prefecture at the Annual Japan Sake Awards in the 2012 brewing year (BY). From there it achieved nine consecutive titles. That run includes the 2019 BY, when no gold medals were selected due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fukushima has continued to hold a leading position since. In the 2025 BY, 20 of its brands won gold medals, making it the top prefecture for the second consecutive year.

The school was founded in 1992; the first top finish came in the 2012 BY. Twenty years. As a rough measure of how long it takes for a region’s capabilities to genuinely change, that is a telling number.

Across the Earthquake

Any discussion of Fukushima sake has to address the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the nuclear power plant accident.

On top of damage to production facilities, products from the prefecture as a whole were affected by reputational harm. Breweries found themselves unable to sell for reasons that had nothing to do with quality.

The period during which Fukushima kept its top ranking overlaps precisely with this era. Having a region’s technical ability demonstrated in numbers, year after year, through third-party judging at a competition became one way of answering rumor with fact. The record of nine consecutive titles is remembered so strongly within Fukushima not simply as an honor, but because of that context.

Three Regions, Three Faces

Fukushima Prefecture is wide from east to west, and it divides into three regions: Aizu, Nakadori, and Hamadori. Even within one prefecture, their climates differ considerably.

Aizu is an inland basin with deep winter snow and wide temperature swings. Blessed with underground water from the Iide and Bandai mountain ranges, it is where the prefecture’s breweries are most densely concentrated. It is fair to call it the core of Fukushima sake.

Nakadori is a long north-south belt wedged between the Abukuma Highlands and the Ou Mountains. Some breweries here draw on underground water from Mount Adatara, and the region includes urban centers such as Koriyama, Nihonmatsu, and Fukushima City.

Hamadori is the mild region along the Pacific coast. Snow is relatively light even in winter, and the sake here has long been drunk alongside seafood.

Many breweries brew with soft water, and Fukushima sake as a whole leans toward a soft mouthfeel. Its aromas tend to be fragrant without dominating, settling into a balance between sweet and dry. Calling a sake “flawless” may sound like faint praise, but that precision is exactly what earns marks at competitions.

Breweries and Brands

Hiroki, from Hiroki Shuzo Honten, is the brand that made Fukushima’s name nationally. Once a small brewery in circumstances dire enough that closing was on the table, it won recognition with muroka nama genshu — unusual at the time — and is now a sought-after brand that is hard to obtain.

Sharaku, from Miyaizumi Meijo, comes from a brewery in Aizu-Wakamatsu. Launched in the 2000s, it broadened its following with fragrant aromas and a fresh, juicy sweetness. It is an example of a relatively new brand reaching national recognition in a short span.

Hirotogawa, from Matsuzaki Shuzo, is made by a small brewery in Ten’ei Village. Known as a regular gold medal winner at the Annual Japan Sake Awards, it has no flashy qualities but is valued for its sheer completeness. It stands as a symbol of Fukushima’s technical level.

Tenmei, from Akebono Shuzo, comes from a brewery in Aizubange Town. It is committed to nakadori, taking only the middle portion when pressing the moromi, achieving both a clear taste and real umami.

Naraman, from Yumegokoro Shuzo, is the brand of a Kitakata brewery, and it is highly accomplished as a sake to drink with food. It is designed not to get in the way of a meal, and not to tire you out even when drunk every day.

Aizu Chujo, from Tsurunoe Shuzo, comes from a long-established house in Aizu-Wakamatsu. It also produces a line called “Yuri,” crafted by a female brewer.

Daishichi Shuzo (Nihonmatsu City) is a venerable brewery founded in the mid-Edo period, and it has kept the traditional kimoto method as its banner. This labor-intensive process, which draws in lactic acid bacteria naturally, produces sake with richness and depth.

Pairing with Food

Fukushima sake is soft, which makes it easy to combine with dishes that let their ingredients speak.

Kozuyu is a signature Aizu regional dish, a bowl of taro, mamefu (wheat gluten balls), wood ear mushrooms and more in a broth made from dried scallop. The refined flavor of that broth and the clean umami of Fukushima sake overlap naturally.

Basashi (horse sashimi) is another Aizu specialty. Its lean, light meat goes well with junmai sake of gentle aroma. Serving it with garlic miso is the Aizu way.

For salty snacks like ika ninjin — dried squid and carrot marinated in a soy-based sauce, a home-cooking staple of Nakadori — sake at room temperature or gently warmed works well. Salt-grilled iwana (char) and yamame (cherry salmon) from the mountain valleys also make a fine match with sake brewed from mountain water.

As for temperature: chill the ginjo styles to enjoy their aroma, and take junmai sake from room temperature to lukewarm. Kimoto-brewed sake comes into its own when warmed, so a type like Daishichi is well worth trying as kan.

If You Visit

Aizu-Wakamatsu has a dense concentration of breweries, including ones downtown that can be toured. The old streetscape of Nanukamachi Street is lined with establishments serving local sake. Kitakata is known as a town of storehouses, and offers brewery tours as well as ramen. Restaurants in Koriyama and Fukushima City let you drink across the prefecture and compare.

Winter in Aizu brings deep snow, but it is also the height of the brewing season. Choose your timing and you can feel the atmosphere of the work itself.

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Fukushima sake is not the story of a naturally gifted region. Confronted with a result of zero gold medals, the prefecture built a school, shared its techniques, developed its own yeast and rice, and over twenty years reversed the standings — and the bottle in front of you today sits on top of that history.

Pick up a sake chosen for its completeness rather than its flash, like Hirotogawa or Naraman, and you should be able to taste what this region has spent all that time building.

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For information about Niigata sake, see Niigata Sake.

For more about sake competitions, check out Choosing Award-Winning Sake.

Sources: publicly available information from the Fukushima Sake Brewers Association and the Fukushima Technology Centre Aizu-Wakamatsu Technical Support Center; Fukushima Prefecture, “Fukushima’s Original Sake Rice ‘Yume no Ka’”; Fukushima Minpo (reporting on the Annual Japan Sake Awards); Nihon Keizai Shimbun (reporting on the Sake Academy); National Research Institute of Brewing and Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association, “Annual Japan Sake Awards”