Harushika Sake Brewery Imanishi Seibei Store

This guide to the Harushika Sake Brewery's Imanishi Seibei Store in Nara traces a five-hundred-year-old fix Buddhist monks devised to keep their rice wine from turning to vinegar. It follows the kura-style building itself, once the residence of a senior monk from Kofuku-ji, which passed to the Imanishi family's small brewery, founded in 1884, in 1924. You'll hear how the flagship sake takes its name from the sacred deer said to have carried Kasuga Shrine's gods into Nara. Ask to taste the driest pour on the tasting menu while you're there.