Kiuchi Kikusakari Taru Sake: Cedar-Aged Sake from the Brewery Behind Hitachino

Everyone knows the owl.

Hitachino Nest is on beer lists all over New York, and we pour plenty of it. What most people don't know is that the brewery behind it had been making sake for 173 years before the first Hitachino bottle existed.

Kiuchi Brewery started in 1823. The beer came in 1996.

This is the sake.

What Is Kikusakari?

Kikusakari is Kiuchi's sake brand, the original business, brewed in Ibaraki, still running alongside the beer that made them famous internationally.

The bottle we carry is their taru sake, aged in cedar barrels, in a 900ml format.

What Is Taru Sake?

Taru means barrel. Before glass and steel, sake moved and stored in wooden barrels, so all sake was taru sake by default. It picked up cedar whether anyone wanted it to or not.

Once modern tanks arrived, that flavor disappeared from most sake. But it had already become the taste people associated with celebration, because barrels are what get used ceremonially. If you've seen a kagami biraki, the lid of a sake barrel broken open with a wooden mallet at a wedding or a New Year. That's a taru barrel.

So taru sake today is a deliberate choice. Brewers put finished sake back into cedar to pick the character up again.

The Akita Cedar

Kiuchi uses Akita cedar specifically, and that matters. Akita sugi is prized for straight, tight grain and a clean aromatic profile. It's the wood used for high-end Japanese joinery and bathhouses. In a barrel it gives a warm, resinous, slightly spicy character rather than the sharp pine note lesser cedar throws.

Aroma: Warm woody cedar, faintly sweet

Taste: Full-bodied and smooth, with rice depth under the wood

Finish: Clean, with a slight pepper

That pepper on the end is the signature. It's subtle, and it's what makes this feel like it's doing something rather than just tasting like a plank.

Why We Poured It

Because it's the missing category on most sake lists in this city. Crisp daiginjo is everywhere. Nigori is everywhere. Wood-aged sake is rare here, and it's the one that changes people's minds about what sake can be, especially whisky drinkers, who recognize the wood immediately and relax.

It's also a full 900ml bottle. This is sake for four people and a long dinner, not a tasting pour.

How We Serve It

Room temperature, or gently warmed. Warming is the move, cedar aromatics open with heat in a way they simply don't when cold. Around 100–110°F is where we like it.

Pair It With

Grilled and smoky. Yakitori off the binchotan, chicken thigh, pork belly, kuro buta sausage. The cedar and the char are speaking the same language. Also excellent with pork kimchi or unagi don.

If you want the full circle, order a Hitachino alongside it. Same brewery, 173 years apart.

Try It at Juraku

Available by the bottle at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side. Ask us to warm it. That's how it's meant to go.