Ine to Agave takes a ¥15,000, 1,000-bottle sake to Daimaru Tokyo's event floor

Ine to Agave, a craft sake brewery based in Oga, Akita Prefecture, will run a pop-up store on the first floor of Daimaru Tokyo from 16 to 29 September, the company said, using the department store's SVP Event Space in Marunouchi to introduce a new premium sake alongside a seven-item collaboration line.

The centrepiece is ASIAN WISDOM, a 720ml craft sake priced at ¥15,000 before tax and limited to 1,000 bottles, according to Ine to Agave. The company said the blend combines one ingredient from each of five Asian origins: Japanese karahanasou, a wild vine related to hops; Korean schisandra berries; Chinese osmanthus tea; Taiwanese ruby black tea; and cloves sourced from Indonesia's Maluku Islands. Ine to Agave is marketing the bottle under the line "One Asia in a Bottle" and had its label designed by the Indonesian studio SatuCollective, part of what the company described as an attempt to define Asian identity on its own terms rather than through a Western lens.

Alongside it, the pop-up carries seven variants of the Hanakaze collaboration series, Ine to Agave said: three developed with artists at ¥3,300 each and four made with restaurants in its home town of Oga at ¥2,750 each, all in 720ml bottles.

"Whether we can make this a success will change the future of craft sake," said Shuhei Okazumi, Ine to Agave's representative director, in the announcement.

Ine to Agave was founded in March 2021 and is capitalised at ¥9.42 million, according to its corporate profile; its business spans sake brewing for both domestic and export markets, restaurants, food processing and lodging. The company said its export sales alone are on course to grow fifty-fold between 2024 and 2027, and that in August 2026 its Oga-based revitalisation efforts became the first project in the Tohoku region recognised under the government's Regional Future Strategy framework.

The choice of venue is the more telling fact than the price tag. A brewery this young could have opened a standalone shop or leant on an izakaya partner; instead it bought two weeks of dense, pre-qualified foot traffic on a department-store event floor sitting directly above Tokyo Station — the standard route small Japanese craft producers use to reach an affluent, discovery-minded audience without committing to a lease, and to test a scarcity-priced product before deciding whether it deserves a permanent home. For Daimaru's operator, J. Front Retailing, the arrangement works just as well in reverse: event floors that rotate through regional and craft brands keep a store people already have reasons to visit — commuters, gift-buyers, inbound tourists — coming back for what's new, at close to zero merchandising risk to the store itself.

The product itself fits a pattern floortok has tracked across Japanese craft beverages this year: premiumisation dressed in pan-Asian rather than purely Japanese storytelling, aimed as much at inbound visitors and regional palates as at domestic drinkers. A ¥15,000 bottle capped at 1,000 units is a message about scarcity, not volume — the real test is whether Daimaru's till receipts turn a two-week experiment into a standing order.