Fueki Shoyu has been producing soy sauce for nearly 230 years and is now in its 12th generation, with its cellar masters perpetuating traditional fermentation in 38 open barrels made from Japanese sugi cedar wood.
In Japan, out of 1,200 specialist companies, more than 90% do nothing more than bottle, whereas in the past — up until the 1950s — soy sauce was a luxury product made by nearly 10,000 local producers through long and complex fermentation processes. Faced with a current market dominated by low prices and accelerated methods in aluminium cellars using chemical yeasts, many artisans are abandoning these traditional techniques. The finest master craftsmen, however, continue to work in open sugi wood cellars, in environments that preserve the natural bacteria which govern the fermentation of moromi through the seasons — a lengthy process that can be repeated 2 to 35 times and requires at least 2 to 3 years to reach the level of a grand cru. As a result, only around a hundred producers still carry out the entire process, of whom 20 to 30 produce a soy sauce of the highest quality.
