A fourth-generation Japanese American from Cotati is set to open Sonoma County’s first sake brewery next month, pouring drinks that trace back to his great-grandmother’s homemade sake and a family history that survived wartime incarceration. Bruce Shimizu’s Shimizu Sake Company will debut its tasting bar in Windsor in September, offering everything from a $34 medium-bodied junmai to a $75 daiginjo, alongside a lower-alcohol sake seltzer line built for casual sipping.
Shimizu’s path to the brewery was anything but direct. According to The Press Democrat, he studied landscape architecture and later worked in real estate development before turning to sake full time. He first planned to open a Sonoma County sake brewery back in 2020, but the pandemic delayed those plans for years. In June 2026, he finally received his license from California’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to brew sake commercially — a Type 01 Beer Manufacturer license that classifies sake as a brewed beverage and permits on-site tastings and retail sales, a structure detailed by AccelPay.
A Family Recipe Passed Down Through Generations
Shimizu’s connection to sake didn’t start in a classroom. His great-grandmother made homemade sake and used koji to ferment pickles, and after the family returned to Sonoma County, she resumed brewing sake and used the leftover sake lees to marinate meat or fish, per the same report. Shimizu taught himself the craft largely by watching Japanese brewers and home sake makers on YouTube, then completed a professional sake brewer’s course in 2015, the same year he produced his first batch using Yamada Nishiki rice in the Central Valley.
That rice choice wasn’t incidental. Yamada Nishiki, grown in Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture, is often called the “King of Sake Rice” because its large, soft starch core withstands the intense polishing required for high-grade ginjo and daiginjo sakes, according to GuildSomm. While Calrose medium-grain rice accounts for roughly 85% of California’s total rice output, specialized growers in California and Arkansas have cultivated Yamada Nishiki since the late 20th century specifically to supply domestic craft sake makers, according to Offrange.
Roots at Fountaingrove and a Wartime Incarceration
Shimizu’s paternal great-grandparents emigrated from southern Japan and first settled in Hawaii before making their way to Sonoma County sometime between 1900 and 1920. Once there, his great-grandfather went to work for Kanaye Nagasawa, the founder of Santa Rosa’s Fountaingrove Winery. Nagasawa, born Hikosuke Isonaga in Kagoshima, Japan, in 1852, was one of the first Japanese immigrants to the United States and became known as the “Wine King of California” after inheriting the 2,000-acre Fountaingrove estate, according to historical accounts from Paradise Ridge Winery. After Nagasawa’s death in 1934, California’s Alien Land Laws — which restricted property ownership for non-citizens ineligible for naturalization — prevented his Japanese American relatives from legally inheriting the estate, contributing to its eventual dissolution, per Oxford Academic…