Soy sauce - Saishikomi, 10 years, Ando Jozo

Here`s a very special soy sauce! Saishikomi means it`s brewed with soy sauce instead of water. And this base soy sauce is over 10 years old. By adding new ingredients and re-fermenting, fresh aromas are added to this perfectly aged sauce to balance the flavor. A true rarity! Since 1853, the Ando family has been brewing exclusively natural soy sauce without any additives. All their soy sauces are made by hand from top-quality ingredients. The umami flavor and subtle sweetness make this soy sauce a specialty of the Akita region in northeastern Japan, famous for its fermented foods. Ando is also known for miso, pickles, and rice cultivation. To this day, it is sold almost exclusively directly from the brewery, as the high quality standards allow for only small production runs. Even though fermentation doesn`t take place in wooden barrels, very old strains of bacteria from the wood cellar impart the delicate aromas otherwise only found in wood-barrel fermentation.