Hachidori Daiginjo Sake

Hachidori Daiginjo is the black bottle at the top of the hummingbird range brewed by Stuart Morris at Shindo Brewery in Yamagata Prefecture, a tenth-generation family house set among mountain water and its own rice fields. Morris is a Bostonian who spent 25 years chasing sake, passed the Kikisake-shi sommelier exam in Tokyo in 2010 entirely in Japanese, then spent three years cleaning and working unpaid in Japanese breweries before apprenticing under master brewer Masanobu Shindo and eventually earning the chance to brew alongside him; Hachidori, named for the idea that if a bird that small can hover, anything is possible, launched in the United States in 2024 through Napa's John Anthony Wine & Spirits. Daiginjo is the most labor-intensive grade of sake, with rice polished to at least half the grain and a slow, cold fermentation that draws out the aromatics, and this one is brewed from premium sake rice grown at the brewery and pristine Yamagata mountain water. The producer describes it as balanced and complex, with crisp apple, cantaloupe and Asian pear, hazelnut and fennel pollen on the mid-palate, and a long finish, and it comes in a 720ml bottle. Serve it well chilled in a white wine glass, on its own or with sashimi, scallops, crab or a delicate white fish.

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