The Sake Master Reviving a Long-Forgotten Local Rice atlasobscura.com

Every year for decades, scientists at the Hiroshima Prefectural Agriculture Gene Bank have planted a small patch of hattanso rice.
Hiroshima’s rice fields are fecund with Hattanso’s descendants, which farmers sell to sake brewers in dozens of prefectures across Japan.
“I was the only one who revived it, and even today I remain the only one who uses this rice in sake,” she says.
By 1995, however, around the time Imada started brewing, the Hiroshima government was recommending a roster of only 11 rice cultivars for local farmers.
The kura had been producing small batches of highly regarded sake since 1868, even before the local government began developing modern rice strains.