Urakasumi has been brewed by Saura in Shiogama City, Miyagi Prefecture, since the brewery's founding in 1724, and by the latter half of the Edo period it had become the official sacred sake provider to Shiogama Shrine. The brand name was drawn from a poem by Minamoto no Sanetomo, the third shogun of the Kamakura era, who celebrated the arrival of spring over the sea at Shiogama. The brewery is the birthplace of Brewing Society Yeast No. 12, isolated from its mash in 1965, known for a clean, strawberry-like fragrance, and its flagship Urakasumi Zen remains one of the pioneering market ginjos, first released in 1973.
