Hatsumago

What it is

Tohoku Meijo has built its house around kimoto for roughly a century, which is unusual even among breweries that use the method at all. This is the flagship, a junmai with the rice milled to 60 percent and the starter left to pick up lactic acid from the air of the building. Skurnik's note is low aroma, medium body, raspberries and cinnamon, finishing dry, and lists oysters, sea urchin and crab cakes as the pairings.

The name

初孫 means first grandchild. The brewery renamed itself in celebration of the birth of the family's eldest son, with the wish that the sake be cherished the way a first grandchild is.

What the room said

Last, at 2.0, which was the largest gap of the night. Two things are worth saying about that. The first is that this was the second kimoto in the flight, and both kimoto bottles finished at the bottom, which says more about a cold blind pour than it does about either brewery. The second is that Hatsumago is versatile across temperature and we served it one way. It deserves a second pour, warm, before anybody concludes anything.

One honest caveat

Our records say only “Hatsumago, Yamagata.” The brewery sells several bottlings in the United States, including a Shozui junmai, a Shozui junmai daiginjo, and a Densho kimoto honjozo. The specs above are for the Junmai Kimoto, which is the flagship and by far the most widely distributed here, and is the most likely bottle to have been on the table. We have not confirmed it against the label, and we would rather say so than tidy it up.