SAWTELLE SAKE IS DOING NEW THINGS
Sawtelle Sake was founded in 2019 in the historic Sawtelle neighborhood in West LA. We love our neighborhood and our city and we’re striving to invigorate sake culture in Los Angeles. Our aim is to surprise and delight people by uncovering the wonderful world of rice fermentation and all the cool things that grains of rice can do. We follow traditional methods to create products that reflect the beauty of our local ecology and seasonal abundance. We hope you enjoy.
VISION
Sawtelle Sake is a Koji company. We make a variety of Koji-based products including sake, amazake and other fun things.
We exclusively brew our sake from Sacramento Valley grown Yamada Nishiki rice. We source our plants and fruits from the finest farms throughout California and Japan.
WHAT IS KOJI.
“First Koji, second moto, third everything else,” is a saying often heard in sake breweries. Koji is the essential foundation of all sake. It is a living culture that is used to transform rice starch into rice sugar. Rice fermentation would be impossible without it. By creating rice sugar through this living culture, we create a variety of products both fermented and otherwise. Fun fact: Koji (aka. Aspergillus oryzaea) is the national fungus of Japan and the base of all Sake, Soy and Miso. Our Koji is handmade from California grown rice.
Koji is the most important ingredient in the sake making process and is widely applicable to all sorts of culinary uses. We exclusively brew our sake from a Sacramento Valley grown sake rice strain called Yamada Nishiki. The plants and fruits are sourced from the finest farms throughout California and Japan.
and we make a variety of koji-based products including sake, amazake and other fun things. Our goal is to celebrate koji by sharing new forms and creations into our local market.
COMMITMENT TO OUR ECOLOGY
The California Ricelands Waterbirds Foundation (CRWF) is an organization dedicated to 60,000 + acreage of sustainable conservation practices in agricultural lands (i.e. rice fields) that are critical for migratory shorebirds in the Sacramento Valley. We donate 1% of our proceeds to CRWF.