Dear [First Name],

Today’s sake stopped me cold the first time I tasted it—bright and precise, with a depth and a finish that I associate with beverages that cost two or three times as much. It earned a Platinum medal at one of the most rigorous and prestigious sake competitions in the world. Yet I’m able to offer it today for under $50.

Boken Ringo is a Junmai Ginjo from Kochi Prefecture, brewed with locally grown rice, water fed by the rivers of Shikoku Island, and a local proprietary yeast. It is, in the most literal sense, a taste of place, and it’s spectacular: green apple and ripe citrus on the nose, fresh herbs underneath, a mouthfeel that is round and generous, and a finish that is long, clean, and precise.

This is the best price you will find anywhere in the country for this bottle—just $45.

Secure your share now.

Last year, a trusted friend introduced me to Daisuke Nakajima, the founder of a new sake brand called Boken. I flew to New York to meet him in person, because the story he was telling—and the sakes he was pouring—demanded it.

Daisuke grew up in Japan, studied economics and applied statistics at Brown and Columbia, and spent years taking American clients to sushi dinners in Tokyo, watching their eyes go wide the first time they tasted really great sake. Those dinners became the heartbeat of Boken, a brand he built with a single mission: to find the most compelling, under-the-radar breweries in Japan and bring their work to American drinkers who would never have found it otherwise.

The Ringo comes from Takagi Shuzo, a brewery in Kochi Prefecture that has been operating since 1884. Kochi is one of the most geographically extreme corners of Japan: the most typhoon-prone prefecture in the country, with a Pacific-facing coastline that batters the region with rainfall and shapes the rice grown there. Because of those conditions, Kochi rice develops smaller grains than the varieties used almost everywhere else in Japan—and smaller grains mean a higher ratio of the starchy core that drives the finest sake.

Ippo Takagi, the sixth-generation brewer, has built his vision around what he calls the “Tosa Experience Sake”—a concept rooted in the idea that Kochi’s ingredients, its rice and its water and its singular yeasts, are capable of producing something that no other place in Japan can replicate. He combines that local conviction with a data-driven approach to fermentation that is decidedly modern. The result is a sake that feels both deeply traditional and completely alive.

Pour it well chilled in a wide-mouthed wine glass. Pair it with shellfish, cheese, tempura, or a well-made pizza—it handles all of them with ease. We have just 300 bottles. That is not a lot to go around, and I do not expect them to last.

Kanpai,

Eduardo Dingler

VP of Wine

Wine Access

About Kochi