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www.gourmetnews.com 14 Oli e Aceti • Gourmet News Marukan Expands with New East Coast Brewery BY LORRIE BAUMANN Marukan USA has just opened a new brew- ery in Griffin, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb that will enable the company to double its production of its naturally brewed rice vinegars and provide more efficient distri- bution to customers on the East Coast and in Europe. The new facility uses the same proprietary brewing process that Marukan has been using for the past 43 years in its West Coast brewery in Para- mount, California, which will continue to operate and serve customers in the western U.S. The new brewery is a 77,000 square foot facil- ity, with about 50,000 square feet of purpose- built production facili- ties. It's built on a 16-acre piece of land, so that it's ready to be expanded in five or 10 years as de- mand for Marukan prod- ucts continues to grow. Its fermenting tanks were imported from Germany; some of the brewing equipment came from Japan; and much of it was hand-fabricated within the region. "Our owner, Denzaemon Sasada, in Japan has two plants near Osaka and Tokyo supplying Japan and the Pacific Rim. The plant in California had been sup- plying all of North America, but Sasada's vision was to have a brewery on both coasts, to serve their respective markets and be both eastward- and westward-fac- ing for exports. This will fill U.S. market demand and enable a bit more growth into Europe," said Marukan USA President Jon Tanklage. The new brewery began operation with test runs after receiving final inspection re- ports in July, according to Tanklage. "When we get that fine-tuned, we will start pro- ducing batches, storing them in tanks and aging them," he said. The first vinegar out of the plant is due to reach the market im- mediately after a grand opening ceremony planned for October. Those first batches are likely to go out to companies that make high-quality salad dressings, particularly those concerned about their clean labels, Tanklage said, although he declined to mention any brand names. "The ones that are picking up the best ingredients are coming to us," he said. "We're the only nonGMO-verified rice vinegar out there, and we will offer organic rice vinegar from the Griffin brewery as well." A Slow-Brewed Process The vinegar is made with a slow-brewed process that starts with high-quality sushi rice grown in California, where warm days and cool nights provide the perfect condi- tions for growing the best short-grain rice, Tanklage said. The rice is inoculated with a koji culture from Japan and then fer- mented slowly into sake. "We do small batches and time," Tanklage said. "We're trying to achieve a certain flavor, a certain taste, and rushing it won't help that.... We use some secret techniques to make sure it doesn't go too quickly." The sake that comes out of that first fer- mentation is aged and then inoculated with the Marukan mother vinegar. That mother originated in Japan, where Marukan has two breweries, one near Osaka and one near Tokyo. By now, though, it's undergone so many genera- tions in the U.S. that it certainly can be re- garded as authentically American, even though it makes a vinegar that tastes very similar to the Marukan vinegar made in Japan, Tanklage said. "We really believe we make the world's finest rice vinegar. That's our tag, and we stand behind that," he added. "Smoothest, mildest and the most flavor." After it's second fermentation, the sake has become a vinegar that just has to be diluted to table strength. Its undiluted strength is about 10 percent acetic acid, the chemical name for the main com- ponent of vinegar, and it's diluted to a standard 4.3 percent acidity with water purified by reverse os- mosis to ensure the purest possible product. Water's the only added in- gredient in Marukan's Genuine Brewed Rice Vinegar, which is eas- ily identified on the grocer's shelf by its green label and bottle cap. The company also makes an organic ver- sion of the Genuine Brewed Rice Vinegar as well as Marukan Seasoned Gourmet Rice Vinegar, which has some added sugar and salt that drop the acidity slightly and contribute a sweet-and-sour flavor. "Use it any time you're cooking rice, a little bit just to season the rice," Tanklage said. "Add it at the end when it's completely cooked and cooling. Every sushi bar that you've ever had sushi at adds rice vinegar to their rice before they prepare the sushi." Drawing on a Long Tradition The new brewery is the latest event in a company history that stretches back to 1649, when Marukan began as the first purveyor of rice vinegar in Japan. In those days, vinegar made from sake was thought of as a food preservative that also gave the food a pleasant sour flavor. Eventually, people started using it as a way to make mackerel last long enough to be transported safely from the Japanese coast to the inland, so that people in the mountainous areas of Japan could also Continued on Page 15

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