Fukumitsuya Higashi

Fukumitsuya is Kanazawa's oldest sake brewery, tracing its origins to 1625 — nearly four centuries of continuous production in the city's traditional brewing district. The Higashiyama shop sits inside the Higashi Chaya district, Kanazawa's best-preserved geisha quarter of wooden latticed teahouses, and operates as a directly managed retail outlet and tasting bar rather than a mere gift counter. Visitors can sample the brewery's junmai sake — sold across a range of bottle sizes from 180ml to 1.8-liter formats — alongside non-alcoholic offerings built from the same fermentation base, including amazake and sake-lees-flavored ice cream. The shop's shelves extend past sake itself into products built on Fukumitsuya's core expertise in rice fermentation: skincare developed from the same koji technology used in brewing, fermented foods and seasonings, seasonal sweets, and a changing selection of antique and contemporary sake cups and drinking wares. The combination of a working tasting counter and a retail shop inside a historic streetscape makes the Higashiyama location a rare chance to taste directly from a brewery whose lineage predates the Edo-period city planning that shaped the neighborhood around it.