HOLBROOK — Award-winning sake is being made in a small shop just off Route 66 in Holbrook, and one of its bottles is brewed with Navajo tea, InvestigateTV reported in a story published by Arizona’s Family.
Atsuo Sakurai and his wife, Heather, run Arizona Sake. Sakurai is from Tokyo, about 6,000 miles away, and worked in the sake industry there before moving to Arizona. Heather Sakurai is from the Navajo Nation.
“Initially, I had a dream. Starting a business, establishing a business. Sake manufacturing somewhere in the world,” Sakurai said.
The couple combines their cultures in the bottle. “Navajo tea, Navajo tea sake. This is Navajo tea itself, a plant,” Sakurai said.
Sake is a traditional Japanese drink made from fermented rice. At the Holbrook shop, workers wash and heat rice in baskets before putting it in a 200-gallon vat to ferment. When fermentation is done, the mash is pressed to squeeze out the sake. Sakurai said one bottle takes about three months from start to finish.
His sake has won competitions in Japan and around the world, according to the report. Some varieties are sold only in Holbrook. “The aroma is really beautiful. People describe it as pear or blueberry,” Sakurai said. One taster said she could pick out prickly pear.
Sakurai said the slow, hands-on process brings him peace in a world of AI and automation. Asked whether Arizona Sake will be around in 100 years, he said, “Hopefully.”
Sources: Arizona’s Family/InvestigateTV. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Eden Aviv / CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
