Master brewer Hanako Kudo has brought her family's sake brewery in Yokote, Akita Prefecture, back to life by returning to the traditional recipe.

Kudo, 42, and her father, Mikio, 71, began making "junmai" pure-rice sake on the morning of Jan. 23 in a big storehouse belonging to Maizuru Shuzo Co., a brewery that has been in operation since 1918. The outside temperature was 1.8 -- warmer than usual for the snowy prefecture.

"It tastes sweet! I hope our sake gets this delicious taste," Mikio Kudo cried as he sat rolling a ball of rice from a large steam basket. This storehouse with gleaming black pillars and beams of cedar was once run by up to as many as eight master brewers.