Hot Springs’ Origami Sake was the only U.S. brewery to win a gold award at the Tokyo Sake Challenge in March.
The Garland County brewery, known for utilizing homegrown Arkansas rice and Hot Springs’ famed mineral water for its sake production, earned gold ratings for its Angelfish, a single-origin junmai daiginjo-style sake. What defines a sake as junmai daiginjo is the milling rate of the rice, meaning the percentage weight of the raw grain that’s removed by processing. The rice used in junmai daiginjo is milled down to at least 50%, which gives the drink more of a refined and elegant style, Ben Bell, vice president of Origami Sake, explained.
“This is where you show off the best of what you can do at a brewery,” he said.
For its Angelfish, the brewery uses 40% polished single-origin Yamada Nishiki rice from Central Arkansas’s Isbell Farms. Yamada Nishiki is the most sought after sake rice varietal in the world and isn’t easy to grow and harvest, Bell said, which also makes it expensive.
Origami’s Angelfish Credit: Origami Sake
Angelfish is described by Origami’s website as having notes of honeydew, pear, figs and honeysuckle, and its recommended pairing is braised eel, steak tartar or caprese salad. Angelfish retails for around $40-45 a bottle, Bell said.
Bell said he would have been proud for any of their sakes to earn gold, but Angelfish winning is a testament to the brewery’s quality because “it’s the hardest one to make and hardest one to get right.”
The accolades didn’t stop at gold. Origami Sake also took home silver medals for its Thousand Cranes and White Lotus sakes.
Origami Sake’s silver medal-winning Thousand Cranes and White Lotus. Credit: Origami Sake
The Sake Sommelier Association launched the Sake Challenge in London in 2012. The 2025 Tokyo Sake Challenge is the first time the competition has been held in Japan, the birthplace of sake as we know it. The competition awarded breweries platinum, gold, silver and bronze awards.
Bell said the team is proud it earned accolades alongside some of Japan’s best breweries. Origami won gold in the international category, but three of the other four gold winners in the category went to HEAVENSAKE, a sake brewed in Japan in collaboration with famed French cellar master Régis Camus, known for his achievements in champagne production. The only other gold medal in the category went to a brewery out of New Zealand.
Bell said he hopes the awards serve as a preview of what’s in store for Arkansas’s first and only sake brewery and represent what level of quality they have already achieved since opening two years ago.
“Being at a world class level, that was the goal all along,” Bell said.
The Hot Springs brewery is continuing to expand its footprint and is on the cusp of its biggest launch yet with the introduction of Snow Monkey, the U.S.’s first sake seltzer. Named after the Japanese macaques famous for enjoying soaks in northern Japan’s natural hot springs, Bell said the ready-to-drink beverage could hit shelves as early as next month.
Bell was also excited to share that he was recently in New York doing tastings that resulted in Origami landing on beverage menus in three Michelin-starred restaurants, including Sushi Nakazawa.
Origami making it on menus in Michelin-starred and James Beard Award-winning restaurants is obviously good for the brand, but it’s also good for the state, Bell said, because diners will learn about Arkansas’s rice production and Hot Springs water as they try the sake.
“I’d certainly want it to have the effect also of people in Arkansas taking some pride in a local thing based off of one of the things we’re the best at as a state — growing rice,” he said.
AloJapan.com