After the period when the aging of sake was rarist, some breweries and retailers rediscovered the genre by accident. Stock that for some reason was left over would sit forgotten or neglected in a dusty corner, only to be later rediscovered after having turned from a remaindered caterpillar to a glorious jukuseishu butterfly.
Not everything that just sits around for several years gets better, but lots of such happy accidents are now proudly out there on the shelves of specialist retailers. More breweries are aging sake on purpose, though, and a few pioneers have been doing so for decades. One such is the Kidoizumi brewery in Chiba.
According to their Web site, Kidoizumi first put nine-year-old sake on sale in the capital in 1971, a long way ahead of the pack. They sell a splendid flight of sakes made to the same specifications, but at different ages — new one-year-old, then five-, 10-, 15- and 20-year-old vintages. The set of five sakes (180 ml each) retails for ¥4,725.