From finance to sake brewing: Aoi Shuzo's 'small but strong brewery'

Niigata Prefecture lies on the Sea of Japan coast. It is a rice-growing region and one of Japan’s best-known sake regions. In Nagaoka, a city in its central part, one person bought the roughly 160-year-old Takahashi Shuzo in 2024: Risa Aoki (39), who has worked at a securities firm and started a business overseas. In an interview with the local broadcaster NST Niigata Sogo Television, Aoki explained why she entered a sake industry that is often passed down within families through M&A (the acquisition of a company), and what her strategy is.

A new team’s brewing begins with ‘UNTITLED’

The year after the acquisition, Aoki renamed the company Aoi Shuzo. One reason was that other breweries share the same name and get lost in online searches. The new name, ‘Aoi’, takes one character from the name of each of the four founding members. They are Aoki herself; her younger brother Kaito Aoki, who grows the sake rice; Ryuya Abe, the toji (head brewer); and Masayuki Doi, who handles branding. For the first year, the sake was deliberately released without a brand name, as ‘UNTITLED’. With the team, the water and the rice all new, the idea was to try several styles and find their own direction. According to SAKE Street, Aoki returned from Singapore during the pandemic and worked in business planning at another brewery. The colleagues from that time have now gathered at her current brewery.

Quality over quantity, aimed at a growing market

Production in the first year was 60 koku (one koku is about 180 litres), which makes it one of the very smallest breweries in Japan. Even so, the stock sold out early. In the second year, 2026, output rose to about 150 koku, and the first named series was released. Since spring 2025, the brewery has also grown its own rice. At first Aoki considered expanding to 1,000 koku, but the target is now 500 koku within five years. The domestic sake market is shrinking, but Aoki is watching the growth in exports and in ‘tokutei meishoshu’, the graded categories such as junmai that carry a quality designation. The relatively high price of 4,000 to 5,000 yen for 720 ml is also based on this analysis. Exports began with Taiwan and Hong Kong and have spread to Malaysia and Australia, with South Korea and Singapore also in progress.

Towards a ‘small but cool brewery’

Local people were glad that the brewery survived and welcomed the new team, and some even delivered letters. Aoki believes that successful breweries have something in common: when leadership changes hands, they are not bound by the past and do not hesitate to change course by looking at today’s market. Her goal is to make Aoi Shuzo a small but appealing company, known in Nagaoka as the brewery everyone knows.

For European readers, Aoi Shuzo is still a hard sake to find. As far as the reports show, shipments to Europe have not yet begun. A brewery producing a few hundred koku a year makes small batches, so even a modest delivery is likely to sell out quickly. What is worth noticing is that the team keeps changing as it explores its direction, rather than reproducing the same flavour every year. If you see it on a list, try it slightly chilled in a wine glass. You can also enjoy comparing how the same brewery’s sake differs from year to year.