SAKE and LOCATION
Heiwa Shuzou is located in Wakayama prefecture(和歌山県) which is in southern part of Japan Honsyu island and has moderate and rather warm climate. This prefecture is near from Japanese ancient culture zone, Kinai, and has Koya-San (Koya mountain) where many famous Buddhist temples are since the year 816. The World Heritage booking includes the Kumano-Kodo which is also in this prefecture and is the real route of worshiper to temples in Kumano. The worship in Kumano is one of important dreams of Japanese people since old time frontiers opened this route in around 1000 year. In the feudal times, Kishu-han, one of the big three lord families, governed here. Wakayama holds so many historical places and stories.
Nowadays this prefecture is a big product-place of various fruits of plums, persimmons, mandarins and etc. Almost all fruits available in Japan are from this prefecture. The site of Heiwa Shuzou is Mizonokuchi (溝ノ口) in Wakayama prefecture, where it is a little special and typical from others in this prefecture, because this region is very fertile and suitable in rice crop and harvest since long and long time ago. There remain many ruins and ancient tomb to prove this. In these days still narrow water channels (called “mizo”(溝） in Japanese) exist along paths around rice fields here. This site was named Mizonokuchi after this.
The site Mizonokuchi is in a basin surrounded by mountains. It gets very cool in morning and evening everyday. Rich volume of pure under-ground water from Koya-San runs in wells here. Thus, this site has all three essential elements of rice crop, best climate as well as rich and pure water for Sake producing.
Thanks to this perfect location, many brewers of approx. 10 houses were thronging here since long time ago. At present, three brew houses from these continue the Sake Producing.
