It is almost 75 years before the American Revolution when Yamana Dungo's family started making sake near Kobe, Japan. Yamana holds up a bottle: "This is made the same way, it tastes the same,” he says proudly.

The Yamana Sake House has an ancient feel to it. Most of Japan is scrupulously clean and tidy, but the sake house has a cluttered and unkempt feel. Contrast this with the breweries and wineries in the States, where barrels or sealed stainless steel tanks gleam.

But there is one different approach to cleanliness I have not seen before: as we walk in we must line up and wash our shoes in a shallow tank of water.

In the sake house, the rice is fermenting in big open crocks. A few have plastic covering them. These, it turns out, are usually the empty ones.

“How do you keep airborne yeasts from getting into the brew-pot?” I ask through an interpreter. Of course, he knows exactly what I am asking about, and he knows it is an issue in beer or fruit wine fermentation.

Sugar creates the process of the fruit (grape, cherry, or whatever) wine or malt beer. And lots of yeasts in the environment can react to create off flavors or vinegar. That is why the process is carefully sealed from open air.

Rapid fermentation, kept very active with periodic additions of more rice, helps prevents air from entering the brew.

More importantly, the base material for sake is rice. As a starchy grain, neither the regular fermenting yeasts nor airborne yeasts will react in the brewpot, our guide explains. Special yeasts have been developed to create alcohol from starch instead of from sugar.

All of the sake at the Yamana Sake House is brewed from locally grown rice. Rice for brewing is different from the rice we eat. “It doesn’t taste good,” Yamana explains. There are several varieties of sake, each brewed form the rice of a particular grower. Some are organic. All that we try, served in small ceramic cups, are as smooth as fine wine, mild, and tasty.

“Kanpei!” (cheers)