Samurai Sake

Who wants to feel like a samurai without having to go through the years and years of outrageous and strenuous training?

I do, I do.

Okay... maybe this won't really turn you into a samurai, but it might make you drunk enough to believe you are one.

Fresh from Japan and available for the U.S. market comes Hiro brand premium sake (Japanese rice wine). Actually introduced to the U.S. in the spring of 2011 by three veterans of the spirits industry who loved sake. Hiro's branding was conceived as one whereby western consumers could easily ask for it by name.

Hiro - pronounced as 'hero' - is a good idea. Every sake I've ever bought both here in Toronto and in Japan is imported from the Land of the Rising Sun and has a name written in kanji (the Chinese letters). So... brand recognition and repeat business could and probably did suffer for people looking to purchased sake for Pete's sake. As well, there was no data on how best to serve the sake. 

But Hiro looks like a Japanese brand - but it is identifiable in English! What a concept! Plus, a consumer can now best determine how to serve it.

The brand name is made utilizing a style reminiscent of Japanese caligraphy (shodo) with thick black strokes. Other images on the back of it include a samurai warrior’s helmet, and the name of the brand, dotted with either a splash of blue or a splash of red denoting a hot/red variety known as Junmai Sake (or Hiro Red) or as a cold /blue variety called Junmai Ginjo Sake (or Hiro Blue cold sake). There is also a beautiful clouded over sun image... highly reminiscent of Nihon (Japan) which does translate to 'rising sun'.

Says Hiro Sake LLC co-founder, CEO, and president Carlos Arana, who has worked with brands such as Jose Cuervo, Seagrams, and Jim Beam, “From long experience in the spirits industry, my partners and I know that consumers like brands, not categories. So they don’t go and ask for a vodka; they ask for a specific brand. The same with tequila, the same with rum, the same with whiskey. So it was a little bit of an eye-opener for us to realize that with sake, consumers were not asking for a brand. That’s where we really saw an opportunity.

Images on the reverse of Hiro Sake Blue.

“Japanese restaurants and Japanese food are becoming more popular, so people are beginning to learn about and consume more sake, but they don’t know how to order it; the names are unpronounceable. So we thought, let’s go for it, let’s develop a brand.”

The Hiro sake is packaged in a 720-mL glass bottle with a frosted, translucent white surface.

The company that designed the bottle is Monday Collective, who selected Japanese designer Tatsuta Hiromi (surname first) to with the visual inspiration.

Hiro was inspired by the true story of Takeda Hiroemon (surname first), a renowned Samurai and Japanese Sake connoisseur from Murakami-shi (Murakami City) in Niigata-ken (Niigata Prefecture) some 200-plus years ago. Takeda worked with a skilled toji (master brewer) to combine the best rice grains from his own fields with artesian waters to produce a superior Japanese sake recipe.

The samurai's helmet on the bottles of Hiro brand sake are representatiove of Takeda's samurai heritage, with the design inspired by traditional family crests.  

Hiro sake is a Japanese sake imported into the U.S. You can view their website at www.hirosake.com.

Cheers!

Files by Andrew Joseph