Jummai Ginjo Santoka

Santoka (山桃花) translates as mountain peach blossom, a name that evokes the hillside orchards surrounding Akaiwashuzou's brewery in Akaiwa, Okayama, where peach trees bloom each spring against a backdrop of low, rounded mountains. Polished to 60%, this junmai ginjo sits at the fuller end of the ginjo spectrum, where more of the rice's natural character is preserved: broader body, deeper grain character, and a quieter aroma that rewards the patient drinker. Okayama's warm Setouchi climate, one of the driest and most sun-bathed in western Japan, produces sake rice with dense, well-formed starchy cores that translate into this kind of substance.