Sakurai’s appreciation for nature and his approach to making his sake was shaped during the 10 years he spent in the Japanese sake industry and learned the craft in breweries across the country. In one of these breweries in the medium-sized town of Akita, he met his wife Heather, who was on a sake tour he was leading. They fell in love and later married in Niigata.
After working for others for years, Sakurai saved enough money to start his own sake brewery. But opening a sake brewery in Japan comes with a complicated licensing process. In Arizona, where Heather had attended high school in Holbrook, the process wasn’t nearly as difficult.
In 2014, the couple and their three children left Japan and moved to Holbrook, about 140 miles from Heather’s family, to give the rural Arizona town a chance.
In return, the Holbrook community offered Sakurai, his family, and Arizona sake a chance.
Heather Sakurai recalls how nervous her husband was when he came to Holbrook City Council just before Christmas 2015. He wanted to operate the brewery from his garage, which required a conditional use permit from the city.
Since he was new to the community, Sakurai was far from certain that the city would accept the permit. It took a couple of years, but in 2017 he started making sake out of his garage. The following year he broke ground for a 1,000-square-foot brewery just minutes from his home on the hill and near the highway.
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