Rice only. No sweet potato, no barley: the grain is rice, the koji is made from rice, and the water has to be drawn inside the Kuma valley or the city of Hitoyoshi. These are not house preferences. They are the conditions under which the name may be used at all.

In 1710 there were eighteen brewing houses in the castle town. When the old licensing system was abolished in the early Meiji years the number rose to around sixty, and twenty-seven distilleries are still scattered along the side valleys, and between them they put out more than two hundred labels, most of which never travel far beyond the prefecture.

There is a prescribed way to drink it. You measure out four hundred and fifty millilitres, decant it into a small flask called a gara, set the flask directly over a flame until it is warm, and drink from a choko rather than a cup. The heat brings the rice smell up out of it, and the small vessel slows you down whether you meant to slow down or not.

Since 1995 the name has been protected as an indication of origin. What that protects is not really a word. It is the insistence on rice alone, and on the water of one valley, in a trade where almost nothing else obliges anybody to stay in one place.