Tsuruga, a Town with No Sake Breweries, Gets a Pine-Scented New Drink: Matsu no Shizuku

Tsuruga, in Fukui Prefecture, is a port town on the Sea of Japan, roughly 100 kilometres north of Kyoto. It once had a number of breweries dating back to the Edo period, but since the last of them, Tsuruga Shuzo, closed in 2005, the town has had no sake of its own. Now a new brewed drink scented with pine needles, Matsu no Shizuku (“Pine Drops”), has been born there. It is the work of Tsuruga Kehi Shuzo, a company set up by local office workers. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported the story in September 2026.

A Schoolboy’s Ambition, Realised Twenty Years On

At the centre of the project is Yosuke Kawase (38). He learned while at high school that the town’s brewery had disappeared and resolved that one day he would make Tsuruga sake with his own hands. He went on to study brewing science at Tokyo University of Agriculture and, after graduating, kept the idea alive while working for a sake-related company. A classmate who works for a local firm, Tomoki Tada (38), supported him on the business and management side, and Kiyota Hakama (70), a management consultant from Osaka, also joined. The company was established in October 2025. Behind this lies the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen to Tsuruga in 2024, which raised calls for “Tsuruga sake that you can drink in Tsuruga”.

Pine Needles Open the Door to a “New Entrant”

In Japan, licences to make seishu (sake in the strict sense, made from rice and rice koji) are in principle not issued to new entrants. Unless you buy an existing brewery or take over its licence, making new sake is almost impossible. Tsuruga Kehi Shuzo found a clever way round this. By adding pine needles as a secondary ingredient, the product is classed in law not as seishu but as “other brewed alcohol”, which opens the way to production even for a newcomer. The pine refers to Kehi no Matsubara, the scenic pine grove in Tsuruga from which the company takes its name, and the needles were supplied by three local shrines: Kehi Jingu, Tsuruga Tenmangu and Matsubara Jinja.

The first batch uses Koshihikari rice grown in Kutsumi in the city and was brewed under contract by a sake company in Fukuoka. It is a small run of 420 bottles of 500 millilitres, priced at 3,300 yen per bottle including tax. According to Mr Tada, it is sweet yet crisp, with a modern character that should appeal to younger drinkers too.

Next Step: A Bar with Its Own Brewing Equipment

The company’s goal does not end with contract production. It plans to seek investors and open a counter bar in the city with its own brewing equipment, a place where customers can enjoy Matsu no Shizuku while watching the equipment at work. The idea is to bring back both a place to drink and a place to make in a town that lost its breweries.

A Note for European Readers

Matsu no Shizuku is currently sold only in Japan and is hard to find in Europe. Still, the story shows a wider trend: young Japanese makers getting past the licensing barrier through secondary ingredients and reviving drinks that carry the name of their region. A bottle labelled “other brewed alcohol” rather than “seishu” is often a new-generation drink with herbs, fruit or leaves added. If you spot one in a specialist Japanese drinks shop in Europe, it is worth knowing that it is not a departure from tradition but one entrance chosen by newcomers, and that may change how you see the glass in your hand.