Aoi Brewery revived a dormant kura and made a fresh start built around the "Maison Aoi" brand. At the helm is Risa Aoki, who took an unusual route into sake: after university she worked at financial institutions in Japan and in Singapore before entering the industry. What she is building is a brewery unbound by the conventional values of the sake world and free to take on whatever it wants to try.

Aoi Brewery is still very young, but an excellent and reassuring team has gathered behind it, relocating to Niigata from Yamagata, Germany, Mie and elsewhere to support the kura.

At the time of writing, in December 2025, Aoi is in its second brewing season. The sake is transparent and clean, with a vivid, fresh fruitiness that leaves a strong impression — and it is delicious. They have said they intend to keep taking on new challenges, so we expect to see sake with styles and concepts that have not existed before, and we are looking forward to it enormously.

Almost everyone at SAKE Street came into this world from another industry, so what Aoi Brewery is doing strikes a real chord with us. Let's lift the sake industry together.