SAKE TOURS · ACROSS JAPAN
Find the kura. Pour the flight.
Insider brewery tours in Kyoto’s Fushimi, tasting flights in Tokyo, the historic kura of Kobe’s Nada and the seven breweries of Saijo. Reviews of the sake experiences worth planning a day in Japan around.
Worth the trip for the sake alone
Three regions where sake is the reason to go.
Every brewing town has its tasting room. Fushimi, Nada and Saijo are where the water, the rice and the breweries made the sake first: the soft-water kura, the coastal giants, the seven-brewery walk. These are the places a sake trip is built around.
Fushimi, Kyoto
Kyoto
Fushimi has poured sake for four hundred years, its soft groundwater giving a rounder, gentler style than anywhere else. An insider brewery tour walks you through the cedar-tank halls and the koji room, then sits you down for a tasting of cups the breweries keep for the people who come to them. No city makes the first sip easier to fall for.
- 1 3-Hour Kyoto Insider Sake Brewery Tour with Tastings & Pairings
- 2 Kyoto: Insider Sake Brewery Tour with Sake and Food Pairing
- 3 Kyoto Sake Brewery & Tasting Walking Tour
Nada, Kobe
Kobe
The Nada district between Kobe and Nishinomiya is the biggest sake region in Japan, where hard Miyamizu water and cold winds off the mountains build the crisp, dry style the country drinks most. The old breweries here run tasting halls and museums along the coast, and a tour strings the best of them into a single afternoon.
- 1 KOBE Sake Tasting Tour at Breweries (tasting fee included)
- 2 Sake Brewery and Japanese Life Experience Tour in Kobe
- 3 KOBE Kampai Sake Tasting Tour at Local Breweries : Nadagogo
Saijo, Hiroshima
Hiroshima
Saijo is one of the three great sake towns of Japan, and it wears it openly: seven working breweries within a few streets, white-walled storehouses and red-brick chimneys, sugidama cedar balls hung at the gates. A walking tour moves you kura to kura, tasting the soft Hiroshima style each house is known for.
- 1 Hiroshima Saijo Sake Tasting Tour with visit to 7 Breweries
- 2 Hiroshima: Saijo Sake Tasting at 7 Breweries Guided Tour
- 3 Hiroshima Saijo Sake Tasting Tour with visit to 3 Breweries
If you only book one
The sake tour more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every brewery visit and tasting on the site, this is the one that sends people home telling everyone they know to go.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular Sake Tours Right Now
Kyoto brewery walks, Tokyo tasting flights, the snow-country kura of Nagano, the Nada giants of Kobe. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a place
The best sake tours, place by place.
Kyoto for the Fushimi breweries, Kobe for the Nada giants, Hiroshima for the Saijo walk. Pick where you are headed and we will show you the sake tours worth booking there.
Which style is yours
Three regions, three very different cups.
Sake tastes like the water and the rice it is brewed from. Start with the style you are drawn to: the soft Kyoto round, the dry Nada edge, or the clean Niigata finish. Each is a region you can tour to the source.
Nagano
Sake brewed where the snow is deepest.
In the alpine cold of Nagano, soft mountain meltwater and locally grown rice make a clean, crisp sake worth the climb. The best days here pair a brewery and its tasting with the rest of the region: the snow monkeys in their hot spring, the ancient halls of Zenko-ji temple, a long lunch in the mountains.
See the best Nagano sake tours →Tokyo
Learn the cups before the night begins.
Tokyo is where most travellers taste sake properly for the first time. A tasting room in Shinjuku or a sommelier-led flight near Tsukiji walks you through junmai, ginjo and daiginjo, cup by cup, with snacks to match, then sends you into the izakaya lanes of Omoide Yokocho and Golden Gai knowing exactly what to order.
See the best Tokyo sake tours →Nara
Where refined sake was first brewed.
Long before Kyoto or Nada, the temples of Nara worked out how to make clear, refined sake, and the bodaimoto method born here is still revered. A tasting day in the old capital pairs that history with the deer-filled parks and ancient shrines, the source of the drink in the cradle of the country.
See the best Nara sake tours →Takayama, the Hida highlands
A tasting in a brewery older than the country you flew from.
In the dark-timber lanes of Takayama’s old town, sake houses have brewed through Hida’s long, cold winters for centuries, a fresh sugidama cedar ball hung at the door each pressing season. A tour here is a tasting inside one of them, the cold-climate rice and mountain water making a sake that tastes of where it is from.
- 1 Takayama: Authentic Sake Tasting at a Historic Brewery
- 2 Private Sake Brewery Visit and Tasting Tour in Hida
- 3 Takayama: Authentic Sake Tasting at a Historic Brewery
How deep do you go
From a first guided pour to a day at the source.
A walked-through tasting flight in Tokyo. An insider tour inside a Fushimi kura in Kyoto. A whole brewery town to wander in Saijo. Pick the day that matches how far into sake you want to go.
Ease in
Tokyo, a guided first pour.A tasting flight in a Shinjuku sake room, eight or more cups walked through by a host who explains junmai from ginjo and pairs each with a snack. The gentlest way into sake, with nothing lost in translation.
Go to the source
Kyoto, inside a Fushimi kura.South of the city, Fushimi’s soft water has fed the breweries for centuries. An insider tour takes you past the cedar tanks and the koji room, then sits you down for the flight you cannot pour anywhere else.
All in
Saijo, a whole brewery town.Hiroshima’s Saijo is one of Japan’s three great sake towns, seven breweries within a few streets, white walls and red-brick chimneys. A day here is tasting your way from one kura gate to the next.
Osaka
The sake goes with the street food.
Osaka is the nation’s kitchen, and its sake is built to keep up with it. The best experiences here pour a tasting flight right alongside the city’s street food, takoyaki off the griddle, kushikatsu fresh from the fryer, so you learn which cup lifts which bite. It is the most relaxed, most delicious way the city does sake.
See all 8 Osaka sake tours →By region
Pick a place to taste your way through.
Kyoto for the Fushimi breweries. Nagano for the snow-country kura. Kobe for the Nada coast. Tokyo for the tasting rooms. Hiroshima for the Saijo walk. Osaka for the sake and street food.
More places
More towns worth a tasting detour.
Takayama for the Hida highlands, Nara for the birthplace, Sapporo for the Hokkaido cold, Himeji under the white castle. The rest of the sake map, ready when you are.
Three days, three sake
Build a first sake trip across Japan.
A morning at the source in Kyoto, a day in Nagano’s snow country, an evening of tastings in Tokyo. Three places, three very different ways to spend a day with sake.
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