feature / face to face / Richard Geoffroy


in anything, you have to plant a flag somewhere, and then adjust. We’ll see.” He adds: “With the right elements, assemblage is a piece of cake. Blending is easy if the objectives are clear, and if you can formulate and specify the components. Otherwise, it’s a struggle.”


A new sensation and versatility at the table What of the struggle of inserting himself into the traditional and perhaps inward-looking world of sake? “I am curious about how the Japanese will perceive this. Not anxious, but curious. I ponder the fact that people might want to be conservative guardians of the temple, of orthodoxy—I’m sure there are some, but I haven’t run into them. In Japan, people are not too loud, not too vocal. In two years, IWA has established itself as a player. There’s been an amazing follow-up; people are experiencing a new sensation.” So far IWA has not been entered for any competitions.


many ways; it has applications to other professional correspondences. Japan offers a sense of renewal, a sense of exigence—I don’t dare to say perfection; of pushing. I feel I’m on a journey, clearly pursuing something. Pursuing a note of beauty, an idea of beauty that could be unusual enough, embracing enough, uniting countries, people—the conundrum of being local and universal.” But an idea of beauty is one thing. Making detailed decisions about how to get there is another. Geoffroy got together “a community of local bankers” to finance the project; they now own nearly 10ha (25 acres) of land, which is leased back to the original farmers, and they buy in rice, as well. They’ve built a brewery. These apparently straightforward moves, when viewed through a winemaking lens, are all points of no return.


What about terroir? Does it mean anything in sake? Does it exist? “I’m still trying to make out the notion of terroir. I’m not sure about it in Japan,” he says. In the end, he thinks it might be about the process rather than the origin. “Some people talk about terroir but polish the rice to the utmost extent and remove any terroir. The pure starch element of the rice can’t be fermented until it has been converted to fermentable sugars. I don’t see an element of terroir in this.” Instead, he points to the layout of the brewery: “There is no such thing as two identical layouts in Japan’s sake breweries, and when you add the macrobiology of the place, the bacteria in the preparation, the wild bacteria—a lot of this is terroir. The microbiological ambience of the brewery has a big impact. I’m sure there’s an impact of rice variety, but I’m not sure about weighting the elements [of terroir].” There are roughly 100 varieties of sake rice (which is different from edible rice), though he reckons that only between ten and 20 of these are widely grown. “It’s a game of options. I thought winemaking and Champagne producing were high on options, but sake beats them by far.” If terroir resides in the brewery and in the brewery layout, how on earth do you design your brewery when no two are alike? In the case of IWA, by hiring a renowned architect (Kengo Kuma, who also designed Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium) and then, presumably, seeing what happens. The design is based on a traditional Japanese farmhouse, and the layout is fluid, clear, and functional—and not based on any other brewery. “In life,


112 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023


“It’s a work in progress. I’m dipping a toe into 1,200 years of history, with all due respect to the existing world of sake. My intention is not to be a troublemaker; I’m following my own path. I don’t want to be misunderstood. Judges’ references are too strict and don’t allow expression outside that framework. Things will evolve. As I gain acceptance, I will start being confident enough. I have to be very focused, and not try to please judges. “In all of this, I’m taking risks. Whenever you experiment, you take risks. I want to be experimental forever, continually experimental.”


Building a brewery helped with integration, he thinks. “The brewery is an act of faith in the future of sake. There hadn’t been a new brewery for years. The industry had been declining for so long, it was more about closing down than building.” There were 3,700 breweries in the 1970s; there are about 1,200 now. IWA is currently 50/50 exports and the domestic market;


it’s being rolled out slowly, market by market, with a focus, at least initially, on restaurants. It goes with food, certainly, but it also finds favor with chefs in a way that wine often doesn’t. It never ceases to amaze, the way that so many chefs don’t care about wine. Geoffroy suggests, “Perhaps if they start thinking about wine, it narrows the possibilities for food and creation and invention.” And perhaps that is the reason. But he says they do find sake interesting, and so do sommeliers, who gradually move away from pairing it with seafood and tempura, and start pairing it with red meat, game, and all sorts of things. I should confess that I am a sake novice, partly because I have never enjoyed it. I enjoyed IWA, though, the second bottling more aromatic than the first. And what was interesting was how it was a good match with every single dish we tried. It’s true that my palate will need more practice before I find matches of IWA with food as rewarding or as interesting as I would find matches of food and wine. But that simplicity could itself be appealing, in a pared-down, Japanese sort of way, perhaps. Geoffroy has not learned Japanese and has no intention to


do so. “It would be a major investment, which I couldn’t afford.” He has a bilingual CEO and good French–Japanese translators. One thinks of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Peter Quince’s exclamation: “Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee. Thou art translated.” Metamorphosis. It’s surprisingly easy. 


Above: All breweries may be unique, but IWA is the first to be built in Japan for many years, and, says Geoffroy, “an act of faith in the future of sake.”


Photography by Nao Tsuda


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