The Story Behind the Sparkle

The Sparkling Sake Brewery is a small-batch brewery in Cambridgeshire, dedicated to exploring the art of naturally sparkling sake.

Founded by Kyoto-born brewer Naoki Toyota, the brewery is inspired by the beauty of impermanence — capturing fleeting moments of nature through fermentation.

Meet ‘awa’

The story began in 2018, when Naoki was living in the UK and experimenting with making sparkling sake at home.

One day, he opened a bottle of cloudy sake that had continued to ferment naturally inside the bottle. He took a sip — and stopped.

“What is this incredible ‘awa’?”

Awa means bubbles in Japanese.

The bubbles were fresh and delicate, created naturally through fermentation inside the bottle. The sake was unpasteurised, vibrant and evolving — unlike anything Naoki had experienced before.

That first experiment would eventually become the inspiration for Nigori awa, but something more important had happened. Naoki had discovered a new way of experiencing sake.

The bubbles brought another dimension to its aroma, texture and flavour. Fermentation itself became part of the experience. What was inside the bottle felt less like a finished product and more like a collaboration between nature and the brewer.

Naoki began sharing it with friends. Their response sparked an idea: to produce this fresh, naturally sparkling sake in Japan and bring it to the UK.

But there was a fundamental challenge. Preserving its freshness and delicate natural bubbles over that distance would require changing the very qualities he wanted to share — through pasteurisation or a different approach to carbonation.

The answer came unexpectedly over dinner at a sushi restaurant in London.Watching the chef bring together carefully selected Japanese rice with exceptional ingredients from Britain and Europe, Naoki began to wonder:

Could a brewer do something similar? Could Japanese craftsmanship meet the nature and ingredients of Britain to create something new — and bring the same sense of surprise and delight?

The idea changed everything.

Rather than bringing sparkling sake from Japan to Britain, he would learn to brew it himself — and build a brewery here.

Learning the Craft in Japan

Naoki returned to Japan and travelled to Nara, a region deeply connected to the origins of sake brewing.

There, he met Mr Kurose, a master brewer with more than 30 years of experience, also known for his work on the renowned shochu Hyakunen no Kodoku. Under his one-to-one mentorship, Naoki immersed himself in the fundamentals of traditional sake brewing.

During his training, he became particularly fascinated by koji — the heart of sake fermentation — and an approach that used an unusually high proportion of koji rice. Its depth and character stayed with him and later became an important foundation for his own brewing.

The experience taught him something beyond technique: fermentation cannot be controlled entirely. The brewer creates the conditions, observes, responds and works with nature as it changes.

That relationship between craftsmanship and nature remains at the heart of The Sparkling Sake Brewery today.

In January 2020, Naoki returned to Britain, ready to turn the idea into a brewery.

Building a Brewery in Britain

Back in the UK, Naoki shared his plans with his friend Tracey, a global marketer with a longstanding connection to Japan and a trained sake sommelier. She joined him in shaping the early brand and helping bring the vision to life.

Then, just as the project was beginning, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.

While much of the world came to a standstill, the foundations of The Sparkling Sake Brewery slowly began to take shape in Cambridgeshire.

A suitable space had to be found and transformed into a working brewery. Licences had to be secured. Equipment was installed, recipes were developed and refined, and early bottles were shared again and again for feedback.

There was no established blueprint for what they were trying to build.

So it was built step by step.

In October 2021, The Sparkling Sake Brewery officially launched with Classic awa — a clear, elegant sparkling sake created by hand-disgorging the naturally occurring sediment from its bottle-fermented counterpart, Nigori awa.

What had begun with a single bottle at home had become a brewery.

A Brewery Dedicated to Sparkling Sake

Since opening our doors, our focus has remained simple: to keep exploring the art of sparkling sake.

Every step of our process — from rice washing and koji-making to fermentation in the brewery, secondary fermentation in each bottle and hand-disgorgement — is carried out in our Cambridgeshire brewery, drawing on the traditional skills and knowledge Naoki learned in Japan.

There are no shortcuts to the kind of sake we want to make.In our naturally sparkling sake, the bubbles are created through a second fermentation inside each bottle, unfolding with the changing seasons. After disgorgement, the sake is left unpasteurised, carrying the freshness and character of its season into every glass.

There is a reason we choose to make sake this way.

Nothing in nature stays the same. Seasons change. Fermentation evolves. Bubbles appear, rise and disappear.

Rather than trying to resist that change, we find beauty in it.

For Naoki, this has always been at the heart of awa: to capture something fleeting through fermentation, and to invite us to appreciate the moment in front of us.

But respecting tradition does not mean standing still.

For us, tradition is a foundation rather than a boundary.

Our brewing is rooted in Japan, but our brewery belongs to Britain. Alongside Classic awa and Nigori awa, we explore what can happen when Japanese craftsmanship meets the nature, seasons and creative culture around us — from British rhubarb in spring and strawberries in summer to collaborations with chefs, artists and other creative minds.

Sometimes an idea begins with an ingredient. Sometimes with a dish, a season, a place or a conversation.

Behind each is the same belief: that food, like art, can cross borders and cultures, bringing people together through a shared sense of discovery, surprise and delight.

Our journey began with one unexpected bottle and a simple question:

“What is this incredible awa?”

Years later, that sense of wonder still guides us.

To keep learning from fermentation.

To keep finding beauty in change.

To create something that could only exist in this place, at this moment.

And to share that fleeting moment with others.

Perhaps that is what awa has always been about.