
今年はソルトレイクシティと松本市が姉妹都市提携をして60周年。当社も姉妹都市提携の一貫で経済交流をすべくこれまで色々活動しております。ソルトレイクのラム酒を松本のリンゴジュースで割ったカクテルを松本市のイベントや市内で販売していただいたり、松本市の日本酒をソルトレイクシティに輸出すべく酒類の販売免許を取得したりです。
I visited Matsumoto City to attend the Matsumoto Beer Festival. Mr.Hayashi, the very well known and respected bartender and bar owner in Matsumoto, who has helped us for the past 2 years at the sister city event was the organizer of this Beer Festival, so I made a visit to say hi.
2018 marks the 60th anniversary since SLC and Matsumoto City became sister cities. My company is head quartered in SLC and we have been trying to promote an economic exchange between these two cities since 2016. So far, we have been able to sell a SLC made rum in Matsumoto City with the help from Mr. Hayashi, who created a cocktail using apple juice made in Matsumoto. He named the cocktail Salt Lake Breeze and helped us to sell it at the Matsumoto City festival called Rakuichi Rakuza. We’ve been also working on exporting sake from Matsumoto city to SLC.

These economic exchange activities were started 2 years ago. We made it a goal to export Daishinshu, the sake from Matsumoto to SLC by July 2018 for the 60th sister city anniversary and hoped to toast with Daishinshu, the people from the Masumoto City of Commerce. Regretfully, we could not achieve this goal, as the exporting process has taken much longer than we expected. Meanwhile, Mr.Hayashi who had a dream to build a brewery in Matsumoto City using local ingredients has been steadily realizing his dream and finally built the brewery in the city this year. He also collaborated with Epic Brewery in SLC and created a special beer recipe for the sister city anniversary event. A man of his word. Impressive! And since this collaborated beer was also served at the Beer Festival, I had to congratulate him and cheer with this beer.

The weather was clear and sunny. A perfect day for drinking beer and admiring the stunning Matsumoto Castle. I told Mr.Hayashi and the people from Matsumoto City of Commerce that we are not going to participate at Rakuichi Rakuza sister city booth this year, as we couldn’t export sake and made no progress in 2018 to present at the event. But we are still working on exporting Daishinshu and feel positive that we could participate at Rakuichi Rakuza in 2019 October. A few days after the Beer festival, I received a call from the head office that Daishinshu finally cleared the exam at the TTB Alcohol Analysis Lab in the USA! That means we can move one step forward toward exporting Daishinshu to SLC. Although we couldn’t make a toast this year, I am hopeful that we would next year at the 61st anniversary!