The Kiuchi Brewery was established in 1823 by Kiuchi Gihei, the headman of Kounosu village. His family was collecting rice from farmers as land taxes for the Mito Tokugawa family. He began his brewery with the idea of using the remaining rice stocks in the warehouse. KIKU (chrysanthemum) is a crest of the imperial household, and SAKARI means ‘property’. Mikio Kiuchi inherited the brewery legacy in 1950. It was the time when the sake industry flourished as the rapid growth of Japan’s economy after the World War II. Although many sake breweries started mass producing low quality sake due to increased demand, Kiuchi Brewery maintained their policy of pursuing the best quality of sake with the optimum ingredients and craftsman-ship.