Sake Nouveau "The Dawn in Shisui"

Sake Nouveau “The Dawn in Shisui”

Client: Iinumahonke Inc.
Design Company: tegusu Inc.
Planner / Creative Director / Designer: Masaomi Fujita
Producer: Anchorman Inc.
Photographer: Yoshiro Hayakawa
Country: Japan

"Nippon Sake Noveau "The Dawn in Shisui" is a fresh Junmai Daiginjo (sake brewed laboriously with very highly polished rice), made by Iinuma Honke, a sake brewery that stood for more than 300 years in Shisui, Chiba Prefecture. This is a reinterpretation of the 「初しぼり」("hatsu shibori", meaning "first extraction in Japanese) that took place every November at the brewery, and was made for the "Japanese Sake Noveau Project" to deliver a new way of enjoying Japanese sake. The Sake Noveau's concept is rooted in the idea to "celebrate, taste, and resonate", and by celebrating the rice harvest and the blessing of nature, sharing the freshness of the first extraction, and the luxury of the flavour that can only be tasted for a single day — we've created a place where people's hearts can resonate with one another. We thought of this by taking reference from the wine industry's "Beaujolais Nouveau".

We begin the extraction at midnight, and ship the products until the next morning — it's definitely a sake that comes together at dawn, and as a bottle that tells the beginning of sake brewing, we named it "The Dawn in Shisui". To express the clear taste of the freshly extracted sake, we used a design that accentuates the transparency of the liquid, and a dark blue for the brand colour that imagines the dimly lit sky just before sunrise. tegusu took creative charge of everything from the project concept to the naming, design, and even the video. For its first year, crowdfunding was used to measure awareness towards the project, and raised over 10 million yen of support."