Iyo Kagiya Muroka Junmai Red (720 ml)

The Shuto family of Saijo City has held the keys to Ehime's rice stores since the Edo period — the brand name Kagiya literally means 'Key-House,' and the brewery's identity has been inseparable from its role as custodian of local grain since Shuto Kanosuke established Seiryo Shuzo in 1877. That guardianship extends to the rice itself: the Muroka Junmai Red is built entirely on Matsuyama Mii, an Ehime-native, large-grained variety polished to 70% seimaibuai, prized for its capacity to produce crisp, dry fermentation rather than the softer, rounder profiles of Gohyakumangoku.

The water source is a subterranean spring fed by Mt. Ishizuchi (1,982 m), Shikoku's highest peak, delivering soft water through the Saijo aquifer — a chemistry that supports the delicate, low-temperature fermentation conducted with Yeast No. 9 (Kumamoto-kei), a strain selected for its floral aromatic lift. The defining technical commitment here is the muroka namagenshu protocol: no charcoal filtration, no pasteurisation, no dilution, bottled at approximately 17–17.5% ABV. Where the brewery's standard hi-ire line undergoes bottle-pasteurisation and six months of cold ageing for flavour integration, this expression bypasses both steps entirely, preserving raw fermentation texture and the natural grain character that carbon filtration would strip away. The result is a shokuchu-shu — a sake conceived explicitly around food — that delivers restrained, clean umami rather than aromatic showmanship, a deliberate counter-position to the richer, more assertive styles of Nada or Niigata.