Scotch whiskey has garnered a reputation for being some the best whiskeys in the world, with many whiskey connoisseurs looking to Scotland for its myriad of fantastic whiskies. Similarly Japan has the best sakes in the world – let’s face it, when it comes to sake nobody does it better than the Japanese…it is after all invented by the Japanese. What if we told you that you could soon buy yourself a bottle of “Scotch Sake”?
The Arran Brewery in Scotland has acquired a five acre site in Dreghorn for Scotland’s first Sake Brewery. The site will house, subject to the appropriate planning consents, Scotland’s first Sake Brewery as well as a state of the art brewing and distilling research and teaching centre.
“It may not at first appear there is a connection between Dreghorn, near Kilmarnock, and Japan but there is. In Japan you will find a small piece of Scotland in the form of a church which once graced Dreghorn but which was dismantled and rebuilt in Tokyo. As well as the Sake brewery which will almost exclusively export it’s Sake to Japan there will be our research and development centre and a brewing and distilling training school subject of course to licensing. We have been making Sake on a very small, almost domestic, scale and are now ready to build a sizable facility” said Arran Brewery’s Managing Director, Gerald Michaluk.