East Coast Wineries: HUDSON VALLEY SAKE! DASSAI BLUE BREWERY OPENS $80 MILLION PLANT IN HYDE PARK

The new $80 million Dassai Blue Brewery opened in the Hudson Valley recently. It's been receiving all kinds of attention. I think it's the best news in the valley in years! The craft beverage market is crowded and some very valuable brands have been struggling. But there is no sake brewery. This is the first! They've been garnering praise and attention from Florence Fabricant in the New York Times, Forbes, and by Chronogram magazine. And this is different, how? This is a foreign investment by the famed Japanese brewer Asahi Shuzo in Yamaguchi! This is big!

Hudson Valley grape historian and Asian beverage enthusiast Stephen J. Casscles (Grapes of the Hudson Valley) posted on September 25th:

As reported in the Albany Times Union, there are plans to build a "A sake ‘museum’: Inside the Dassai Blue brewery in Hyde Park Amid rising American interest in sake, major producer Asahi Shuzo has unveiled a new, $80 million brewery and tasting room in Hyde Park. It's the Japanese company's first U.S. location and the first major sake brewery to open in the northeast.

Why here? Dassai said proximity to the Culinary Institute of America and New York City was important. The CIA, which partnered with Dassai for the development, plans to expand its sake education program."

To help retain Agriculture in the Hudson Valley, growers need to be cognizant of the many new facilities that are being built in the Hudson Valley for the production of wine, beer, cider, spirits, and co-ferments. All of these facilities desire to use locally produced crops if they are available and competitively priced. Having a suitable mix of wineries, breweries, cideries, and distillers will help with the "next wave", which is the production of co-fermented alcoholic beverages.

The New York Times also trumpeted the new brewery!

Dassai Opens Its Sprawling Sake Brewery in the Hudson Valley

Dassai has opened a new sake brewery in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Florence Fabricant

By Florence Fabricant

Sept. 25, 2023

Dassai, the brand of sake made by Asahi Shuzo in Yamaguchi, in southern Japan, is not new to the United States. But this week its sake produced in the Hudson Valley is making its debut. On Oct. 12, the company’s new sake brewery in Hyde Park, N.Y., a 55,000 square foot complex of rooms for washing and soaking rice, koji-making, drying, steaming, fermenting and bottling, will open its visitor center for tastings and tours by reservation, $50. The facility is producing a few sakes, the first of which, Dassai Blue 50, is now appearing on store shelves and in restaurants. Kazuhiro Sakurai, the company’s president, said that Dassai has partnered with the nearby Culinary Institute of America, which approached them to open the brewery in part to work with its instructors, students and chefs to educate them about sake. Dassai is a supporter of the cooking school. In addition to the brewery’s sprawl of antiseptic white rooms equipped to handle the various stages of sake-making, there is a separate building where the rice for sake is milled at enough of a distance to prevent dust from the process from tainting production. Rice is milled or polished to varying degrees — the more extreme the finer the drink. Dassai Blue 50 refers to the rice grains that are polished to 50 percent of their original size, making the drink a daiginjo. (The company plans to introduce sakes at 35 percent and a 23 percent.) For now the rice is being imported from Japan, but Dassai has begun cultivating the proper variety in Arkansas. Dassai Blue 50 (about $35) is clear, with a fruity, honeydew aroma, and a smooth, slightly sweet flavor. Though most sakes, including Dassai’s imports, have 16 to 17 percent alcohol, Dassai Blue 50 is 14 percent. Mr. Sakurai’s father, Hiroshi Sakurai, the company chairman, said that one of their goals is to make sake more acceptable to accompany cuisines other than Japanese; “a challenge,” he said. The company recommends using stemware, not traditional sake glasses.

And this from Chronicle Magazine!