Sake: The History, Personal Stories and Craft of Japan's Artisanal Breweries is a compendium of the most important generational sake breweries in Japan, featuring profiles of and interviews with the passionate families who run these operations, along with luxurious photography of the small batch processes, landscape and people involved. The 75 profiles include 60 sake breweries, 10 shochu distilleries and 5 awamori distilleries from Okinawa all the way to Hokkaido for geographic and stylistic diversity. For over 2000 years, sake has been a uniquely Japanese product in some shape or form. Today, Japan even hosts a National Sake Day. However, despite 21st century globalization, it remains an industry that is little understood by outsiders, regardless of the fact that there is growing interest. In addition to the colorful, deeply personal stories behind the owners and brewers, the book will serve as a guide to Japan's most unique generational sake, helping to enlighten a new drinking audience on artisanal alternatives to the popular mainstream offerings. To ensure a well-rounded approach, the book will also provide an introduction to unique shochu and awamori distilleries, two close relatives of sake. Beautifully illustrated with full color photography by one of the world's top travel photographers (Jason Lang), the book will appeal to a broad audience but is intended for readers outside of Japan. For novices, it will open a window to the world of sake and the stories of the passionate people who make it. Well initiated enthusiasts will benefit from a curated list of sake, shochu and awamori breweries and distilleries they can further research, buy and taste. Because many of these breweries and distilleries do not actively export their products outside Japan, beverage professionals will discover many brands that they wish to contact and consider importing for their menus."

Author Biography

Hailing from Toronto, Canada, Elliot graduated from the University of Calgary before working in the wine and sake industry in Canada for many years. He became managing director of Merlo Vinoteca in 2007, a wine education and retail center in Calgary, before managing food and wine programs throughout the country. In 2011, Elliot relocated to Hong Kong as part of the opening team of restaurant Yardbird, recently named as one of Asia's 50 Best Restaurants by the prestigious San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants Award. Born in Kanagawa, Japan in 1961, Hayato founded a venture company at the age of 23 before founding Oval One, a Tokyo-based marketing consultancy that specializes in sake and shochu products.For the past twenty-three years, Hayato has been deeply involved in new product and business domain developments for Nikkei 225-listed companies, such as Nippon Telegraph and Telephone and NTT DoCoMo.In addition to his advisory work, he has always had a keen interest in Japan's traditional culture and is an SSI-certified Master of Sake and Shochu Adviser. This has prompted visits to numerous sake breweries. Critically-acclaimed and currently ranked as one of the Top 25 Photographers Right Now by Complex.com, Jason Lang has been clocking up some serious frequent flier miles over the past decade, traversing the globe from his Bangkok base to capture some of the world's most interesting people and exotic destinations. His work, a cinematic twist on classic reportage, features regularly in the pages of GQ, Monocle, Wallpaper, Bon Appetit, The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveller UK, Travel Leisure, Robb Report and Time Magazine.