Savoring Art with the Five Senses

Richard Geoffroy is a winemaker who also holds a doctorate in medicine. In 1990 he became the fifth Chef de Cave of Dom Pérignon, and for 28 years he led this legendary house. In 2019 he founded the company Shiraiwa, and he makes IWA as its founder and maker.

Shiraiwa was founded together with two co-founders. Ryuichiro Masuda, born in 1966, is president of Masuda Shuzo, founded in 1893, which makes Masuizumi, the most famous sake brand in Toyama Prefecture and an innovative, singular one. In his local community of Iwase he is also a strong supporter of craftspeople. Charles-Antoine Picart, the CEO, is from Paris. He graduated from the Wharton School in the United States in 2000 and spent 18 years at Dom Pérignon and Moët & Chandon, serving as a manager and director.

The making of IWA brings in artists of international standing, among them the architect Kengo Kuma and the designer Marc Newson, as well as a calligrapher, a designer and a photographer. “To be in harmony with the world’s cultures and cuisines, and to create high added value. To pursue the essential, and to remain proud of our Japanese roots.” This is how Geoffroy describes what IWA aims for.

IWA’s brewery is in the Shiraiwa district of Tateyama, Toyama Prefecture, a place surrounded by rich nature and rice fields. “The Origin is the Destination.” IWA’s roots lie in Shiraiwa, and the brewery was built here so that admirers of IWA from all over the world could visit.

Created with the architect Kengo Kuma, the building is a contemporary kura, as sake breweries are called in Japanese. Inspired by the region’s traditional gassho-zukuri farmhouses, it blends into the landscape amid the great outdoors, and everything, from sake-making to reception, sits under a single roof.

To make IWA 5 is to seek out and build a perfect balance. That cannot be achieved with a single base sake alone; it comes from assemblage, the blending of several. The number 5 in its name stands for balance, harmony, fusion and essence, and for IWA it symbolises assemblage.

The defining character of IWA 5 is its complexity and its pleasing balance. Rich in flavour yet light, it gives an unbroken sense of consistency and harmony. It does not only express a fine sense of balance: it continues to evolve over time, promising a new experience free of fixed ideas. IWA keeps exploring every possibility as it takes on new ways of making sake. There are no set rules.

Each assemblage has its own character. Assemblage 2 expresses balance and complexity, a delicacy that puts purity and aromatic intensity first, and lively aromas. Assemblage 3 brings power and a harmony of sensations: dense and deep, with a smooth, pleasing finish. Assemblage 4 has refinement, a firm body with a light, floating quality, and remarkable dynamism. At the heart of this exhibition is the new IWA 5 Assemblage 7, released on the opening day.

A bottle and logo with a firm visual identity. Clean-cut, minimal and clear, yet alluring. Sensual and sensory, while keeping an element of mystery. The black varnished cap is of noble glass, its solid grace emitting a decidedly satisfying clink when nudged open.

“The moment you taste IWA 5, I think you will sense the energy we have put into brewing it,” says Geoffroy. Just as IWA has always taken on challenges, he hopes its admirers will try many different ways of drinking it. Temperature and glassware are the keys.

Whether chilled or warmed, IWA 5 shows a different face at each temperature, and the glass changes the taste as well. The glasses IWA recommends are the Lehmann Signature n°4 Arnaud Lallement Ultraleggero, the John Jenkins Starr White Burgundy, the Riedel Sommeliers Burgundy Grand Cru, the Riedel Extreme Junmai and the IWA glass by Marc Newson.