After more than a decade of planning to bring a sake brewery to Hot Springs, the idea is finally becoming a reality. Origami Sake is on the road to opening the first sake brewery in Arkansas, Matt Bell, the president and CEO of the company, said during his presentation to Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club on Wednesday. Sake is a Japanese alcoholic drink made from fermenting rice. Two important aspects of the drink are water and rice. While Hot Springs provides excellent water to the facility through a well near the brewery’s location at 2360 E. Grand Ave., the rice is provided by Isbell Farms at England in Lonoke County. Matt Bell said, “48% of the rice in the U.S. is grown in Arkansas.”…

If your only experience with sake—Japan’s national rice-derived beverage—has involved quickly downing the warm liquid to endure its brashness, you are missing out on the drink’s elegant, versatile nature. “I think sake at its best is complex, multi-layered, and even surprising,” says Weston Konishi, the president of the Sake Brewers Association of North America. “When you think of all the different producers making all the different styles of sake, you realize the adventures are endless.” Indeed, there’s an abundance of options to sip solo, craftily combine for a low-fi cocktail, or pair with a multitude of meals. But first, let’s learn a little more about what sake is, how it’s made, and how you should best imbibe it…

Asahi Shuzo Co., a major Japanese sake firm known for its signature product Dassai, will begin brewing at a plant in New York next spring in a bid to seek consumers in the already crowded United States market. As the first major Japanese company to set up a sake production facility on the U.S. east coast, Asahi Shuzo is looking to promote sake as a go-to beverage served not only with Japanese foods but a variety of global cuisines. The company’s CEO Kazuhiro Sakurai said its new ¥7 billion ($53 million) facility in Hyde Park, over 100 kilometers north of Manhattan, should be an outpost for his bid to develop new markets in the United States…