Bloomberg | American Sake Is Having a Major MomentA small but growing cadre of producers are brewing inventive bottles with cult followings—and they’re even exporting to Japan.

By Kara Newman

June 16, 2025 at 4:09 PM UTC

“Oak, coconut, candy dots.” That’s how Alyssa Mikiko DiPasquale, owner of Boston sake bar Koji Club, describes Needs of Many, a canned sake made by Farthest Star in rural Medfield, Massachusetts, an hour’s drive away. Another, Class M (“roasted chestnuts, shiitake mushrooms, custard”) would go well with a smashburger, she muses, or a side of spicy potato chips—and both can go toe-to-toe with any of Japan’s traditional brews.

American sake is having a moment. The seeds for a domestic industry were planted when US farmers started growing sushi rice in the 1990s, and it’s flourished alongside the global rise of Japanese cuisine and the thirst for sake to sip alongside it. Dassai, arguably Japan’s most famous high-end brand, opened Dassai Blue, a 55,000-square-foot facility, in 2023 in Hyde Park, New York, to make its products using American water and rice. And last year the US became Japan’s largest sake export market by volume. Shipments surged 23% from 2023, driven by fine-dining demand, according to the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association. (China remains Japan’s largest sake export market by value.)

“The craft takes practice and care, like most excellent things,” DiPasquale says. “And we are in a moment of delicious reward.”

Farthest Star Sake’s flagship junmai sake, In a Strange Land, is made in rural Massachusetts.Source: Farthest Star Sake

Sake making is time- and labor-intensive: Rice grains are gently polished and cooked, fermented with koji mold and kubo yeast, then filtered and aged. The barrier to entry is high, so domestic producers are still a meager group; compared with hundreds of breweries in Japan, the Sake Brewers Association of North America includes just 19 members in the US. Except for Dassai, these are generally small operations, but the US producers are putting their own spin on the tradition and creating bottles with cult followings.

“There’s so much freedom here to experiment and to shape sake to reflect the local environment,” says Nancy Matsumoto, co-author of Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Saké. While Americans build on Japan’s deep expertise, their “anything goes” attitude shows up in oak-aged pours from Texas Sake (tagline: “Kanpai Y’all!”) and Arizona Sake’s prickly pear and Navajo tea flavors.

Arizona Sake infuses a junmai ginjo with Navajo tea, made from the greenthread plant.Source: Arizona Sake

Arkansas, which produces 40% of the country’s rice, according to the USA Rice Federation, has emerged as the epicenter of sake production. That’s largely thanks to Isbell Farms, which has carved out a specialty business growing sake rice varieties such as Yamada Nishiki and Omachi—and offering milling to order. (More polished equals more premium.)

Access to Isbell Farms is “one of the reasons we started making sake” in Hot Springs, Arkansas, says Matt Bell, who founded Origami Sake there in 2022. The other is proximity to soft water, which is notably low in the iron and manganese that can produce unwanted flavors. Origami’s lineup ($25 to $49 for 750-milliliter bottles) includes crisp, melony White Lotus, honeyed Angelfish and a zero-proof variety. In April, Hot Springs hosted 400 enthusiasts at the fifth annual American Craft Sake Festival in tandem with the state’s cherry blossom festival.

Meanwhile, California has its own sake ecosystem, as the second-largest rice-growing state and a center of the Asian diaspora. Enter breweries such as San Francisco’s Sequoia Sake, with bottles infused with wasabi, jalapeño or habanero (priced around $24 for 375ml); Oakland’s Den Sake and its flagship Blue Label ($31 for 500ml); and LA’s Sawtelle Sake, with cans of fizzy yuzu ginger ($8 each).

But in March, in the ultimate flex, New York’s Brooklyn Kura became the first US maker to export to Japan. Tokyo locals can now purchase Occidental, a dry-hopped sake with a grapefruity, IPA-like hint, at department stores and important restaurants (¥4,500 to ¥5,000, or $31 to $35, for 750ml). It’s not a limited-time offer: “We want to be more than just a shiny object,” says Brooklyn Kura CEO Brian Polen. “Japan is the largest market for sake in the world, so it’s important that we find a sustained way to sell our sake there.”

It’s a pivotal moment for the industry. Sales in Japan are in steady decline as the population ages and young people favor wine, beer or cocktails. Unesco has even added sake-making to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, out of concern that it might be a dying art in the country where it was born.

Will the novelty of imports such as Brooklyn Kura help reinvigorate Japan’s sake industry? Experts say it’s possible. “That happens in Japan. Something that’s not popular there becomes popular abroad,” Matsumoto says, and young people take another look. “I think that’s happening in sake.”