Yukinobousha Jyunmai Ginjyo (720 ml)

Founded in 1902 by Saito Yataro in Yurihonjo City, Akita, Saiya Brewery built its kura on a natural 6-metre slope — the Nobori-gura, or climbing brewery — so that rice polishing at the hilltop flows downward through fermentation and pressing by gravity alone, eliminating mechanical agitation at every stage. That structural decision is inseparable from the sake in the bottle.

The water source is a mineral-rich underground spring fed by Mount Chokai (鳥海山), whose snowmelt delivers the clean, low-iron profile essential to Akita's delicate ginjo style. The rice — Akita Sake Komachi polished to 55% seimaibuai — is grown in part by brewery employees themselves, with over half the supply farmed in-house, a level of paddock-to-bottle control almost unheard of in premium sake production.

Production follows the house's 'San-nai-zukuri' (three-no) philosophy: no paddle-stirring (fermentation proceeds by natural convection), no charcoal filtration, and no water addition — bottled as full-strength genshu at approximately 15–16% ABV. Fermentation uses a proprietary in-house yeast (jikagei kobo) propagated each season, driving the slow, cold ginjo-zukuri fermentation that generates the house's signature apple-and-pear aromatic register without the weight typical of undiluted Tohoku sake.

The special feature here is the contradiction it resolves: genshu at this polish level almost always reads as dense and assertive, yet the no-stirring, no-filtration, no-dilution discipline produces a texture that stays precise and clean — a structural anomaly within its own category.