Chichibu, where sake, wine and beer sit side by side

About an hour and a half by train north-west of Tokyo, the mountain-ringed Chichibu area of Saitama Prefecture is a rare place where sake, wine, craft beer, whisky and mead (honey wine) are all made in a single basin. According to the organiser, Seibu Recreation, the one-day Chichibu Sake Brewery Festival 2026, bringing together nine local makers, was held on 10 October at Matsuri no Yu, the hot-spring facility in front of Seibu-Chichibu Station. It was the second edition. A wine fair featuring three local wineries is also running from 1 October to 29 November.

Nine makers in one valley

The exhibitors were the sake makers Yao Honten, Bukou Shuzo and Fujisaki Sohei Shoten; the beer makers Yao Honten and Chichibu Beer; and the three wineries Chichibu Wine, Chichibu Usuda Winery and Winery Passion. They were joined by BAR Te・Airigh for whisky and Dear Let Field Brewery for mead. Limited-edition labels not normally sold at the same venue were also on offer. Sake breweries that also brew beer, and wineries that use casks from whisky distilleries: in Chichibu, connections across different types of drink arise naturally.

Beer with flower yeast, and wine from pomace

For European readers, the new styles of drink are the most interesting. “Chichibu Mizuki Craft Beer”, released under Yao Honten’s FEST365 brand, is brewed with yeast taken from the flowers of the mizuki (dogwood), a deciduous tree. Its creation involved Takeshiro Shimazaki of the NPO Chichibu Hyakunen no Mori, which practises forestry that makes use of sap and other resources without felling trees. Winery Passion’s “CinnaHop Bé-A” is a low-alcohol wine made from reused grape pomace left over from winemaking, with notes of hops and cinnamon. Chichibu Usuda Winery made a sparkling wine from locally grown white grapes, Seibel 9110 and Koshu Blanc (Kai Blanc), matured in casks that had held peated whisky (made with malt smoked over peat) from a Chichibu distillery.

Red wine from a small vineyard, and local food

Chichibu Wine made a special red from Muscat Bailey A (a red wine grape bred in Japan) and Black Queen, harvested for the last time before replanting from its own vineyard at the foot of Mount Ryogami. The yield was kept down by thinning the fruit, and the wine was made at low temperatures. The wine fair also offers pairing suggestions using Chichibu ingredients, such as cream cheese made with the local pickle shakushi-na and konnyaku steak.

If you want to enjoy Chichibu in Europe, start by widening your view of it as a “sake region” a little. Chichibu is an area where sake breweries, wineries, breweries and distilleries sit side by side, much like a European wine region. If you spot the name “Chichibu” in a sake specialist or wine shop, you could line up a sake and a Japanese wine and compare how the same land’s water and climate show in each. Wine matured in whisky casks and low-alcohol drinks made from reused pomace also tie in with the “no-lo” (non-alcoholic and low-alcohol) and sustainability trends spreading in Europe, so future export developments are worth watching.