Suminoe Shuzo (墨廼江酒造)

During the Edo period (1603-1868) Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, flourished as a port for rice shipments of the Sendai Domain. Suminoe is named after the deity of navigation and sea voyages enshrined at Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine in Osaka.

The theme of the saké brewing here is to create a "clean, soft and elegant flavored saké," states Yasunori Sawaguchi, the 6th generation brewery president.

It was in 1989 that President Sawaguchi returned to Ishinomaki to take over his family business. While attending saké tasting events in Tokyo and Osaka, he steadily developed business partners. After becoming a master brewer himself, through repeated trial and error, he narrowed down his product line to only include saké made of "Miyagi yeast" and established a style of drawing the individual taste of the variety of saké rice being used. More than 90% of the brewery's rice is saké rice, which is characterized by abundant use of the famous saké rice varieties Yamada Nishiki from Hyogo, Kuranohana from Miyagi, and Gohyakumangoku from Niigata.