How Uka fuses Elegant Elegance in the California - Japan Art of Sake-Making
Uka is a story about gratitude that starts as far back as the 1600s Japan. At that time, it is recorded that an ancestor, Zenzaemon Koda, was Director of Construction for his lord. As the Koda family name contains the Japanese character for rice field, it is believed that he was involved in planning rice fields. In the following centuries, my line of the Koda family has been tied to rice in some manner.
More recently, Keisaburo Koda, my grandfather, emigrated from Fukushima to California in the 1910s. Although he was a school principal in Japan, he started his American Dream as a laborer picking peaches. With ambition, steadfastness, and a knack for business, he founded Koda Farms in 1928 and built a successful vertically integrated rice farm and mill that sold rice under his own brands. My father’s generation created the unique Japonica medium grain rice variety, KR55, in the 1950s which is still packaged today under the brand name, Koda Farms Heirloom Kokuho Rose® (the Japanese translation of “Kokuho” is “country’s treasure”).
Omurasaki Beverage Company was founded in 2019 to start a new chapter by taking the KR55 rice variety in a completely different direction by having it brewed into Uka sake. While sake is an ancient beverage, brewing it with a unique California rice variety to create a conceptual product representing the culmination of centuries of family heritage was new. One of the meanings of the Japanese word, Uka, is “emergence,” as in a butterfly emerging from it’s chrysalis. This echoes what happens to the rice when it is transformed from a table staple into something that is elegant and refined. The Uka butterfly is symbolic of the tie between the USA and Japan with the lower wings representing stylized maps of California and Fukushima. This carries on my grandfather’s commitment to foster better relations between his adopted country and his birth country.
Uka is a collaboration with a Japanese sake brewery, and it was important that the brewery selected to transform the rice into sake be located near where my grandfather originated in Fukushima. Working with renown brewery, Ninki Inc, achieves this and adds the depth and dimension of a brewery family with three hundred years and nineteen generations of excellence. The final piece of the Uka concept is supporting butterfly conservation via the San Bruno Mountain Watch in Northern California that protects and enhances habitat for endangered and threatened butterfly species like the Mission Blue Butterfly.
Currently, the Uka sake line is comprised of three organic junmai daiginjos polished to 40% (60% of the whole grain brown rice kernel has been milled away). Uka Black Label is a traditional, full bodied, super smooth, slightly sweet, and slightly floral sake. Uka Dry is a counterpoint being drier, less sweet, and brighter with more subtle nuances. Uka Sparkling Sake is a naturally effervescent, bubbly, and fun sake. In the latter part of 2025, a new product, “Uka Moment” will be introduced to the USA as a champenoise-style sake. It will be similar to champagne with around five bars of pressure and without the sweetness of Uka Sparkling Sake. My hope is that Uka resonates at some level with all people whether or not they drink Uka. We all have reasons to be grateful for those who came before us, those around us now, and those who will follow after us. I can never be as large in life as my grandfather, but if he is happy with Uka, then I’ve done something right. Although he died in the same year I was born, I was told that he liked to drink sake, and I can’t help but imagine what it would be like to drink Uka with him.
