When Hot Springs, Arkansas native Ben Bell, hoping to launch a sake brewery in his state, told Matt Bell that the area should be the Napa Valley of sake, that vision became a “north star” for the latter native son as well. This was 2016. Had these two very different individuals, who share a last name but aren’t related, not had their chance encounter at a party in Arkansas, the perfect sake brewery might never have come to fruition several years later.
Perfect? Arkansas is America’s largest rice producer, a rural state accounting for nearly half of all production in 2023. Hot Springs, where Origami Sake was established, is well known for its water resources, its name originating from the geothermal springs that gave rise to the small town. Special sake rice that would be needed to supply such a brewery, meanwhile, would come from Isbell Farms, a family-owned business just outside of town that had carved out a unique place in American and Japanese agricultural history for having cultivated Yamada Nishiki rice (see feature last issue). Maybe not perfect, but picture perfect for sure. Ben, unfortunately, was barreling headlong into burnout. Dreams can ride you into the ashes sometimes.
Ben’s dream was born in Hot Springs and it’s only appropriate that Matt helped it rise from the ashes there. A native of the small town (pop. 37,000+), Ben was selected to attend the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, a public boarding school for honors students where he thrived. But his advanced education at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest left him uninspired and unmotivated; he left without a degree, returning to Little Rock, Arkansas to find work in the food and beverage industry. After a stint in a restaurant kitchen, he ultimately landed a job in a liquor store specializing in wine where the dream began to take shape after encountering sake there.
“I remember the very first brand I tried that became ‘the one’: Maruto, from Nagano,” says Ben. “That got me curious. I wanted to taste more sake after that as I couldn’t make an assessment on just that one.”
Ben searched online and discovered that there was an annual sake event in New York hosted by the Japan Society. He hopped on a flight and his real journey began. The year was 2008.
“I got to try table after table of craft sake. That’s when I became obsessed. After that I realized I had to keep moving forward with sake somehow.”
That same year, he also met Chris Isbell of Isbell Farms and the gears in his head began to notch up a speed. Ben began studying Japanese on his own while laboring in the retail shop for a couple more years. He then traveled back to New York to take John Gauntner’s Sake Professional Course (SPC), speaking further with Gauntner about potentially going to Japan and training there. Gauntner ultimately introduced him to Mitobe Shuzō in Yamagata, makers of Yamagata Masamune. In 2012, Ben flew over to Japan to meet the kuramoto. Why that brewery?
“The president, Tomonobu Mitobe, had lived in the US for a couple of years in college and spoke English,” says Ben. “When you meet him, you get it. He’s very laid-back, open-minded, and also very sharp.”
But both he and Ben knew that there would be a need for some level of Japanese in the brewery. Ben admits that he didn’t realize how bad his Japanese was at the time, and Mitobe let him know. Mitobe nevertheless said he could come back in the future and train for two weeks.
Ben recounts, “That was a nice invitation, all things considered. I also believed I should say yes to anything that anyone would offer giving me hands-on experience in the sake brewery.”
He timed his 2013 return to Japan to coincide with Gauntner’s SPC Advanced Course in Tokyo, and from there he went to Yamagata for two weeks of the real deal before returning to America, unfortunately, with an injured back sustained during all the hard manual labor in the brewery. While convalescing in Hot Springs, he heard about his hometown’s sister-city relationship with Iwate Prefecture’s Hanamaki, another small town known for its hot springs.
The sister-city organization in Hot Springs is an active, robust one that has been engaging in educational exchanges for years; unlike many sister-city designations, this one is by no means a token one. When Ben shared with them his dream of further training in a sake brewery in Japan and eventually opening his own in Hot Springs, the members sprang into action.
“After that, it was a fast turnaround,” Ben smiles. “They told me they had a sake brewery they could connect me with and I learned that it would be Nanbu Bijin. They communicated with the president, Kōsuke Kuji, and got that all set up.”
Nanbu Bijin is one of the more visible sake breweries in Japan with a healthy export market in America as well. Its charismatic president has also cultivated a legacy of training non-Japanese in his brewery. As far as sister-city connections go, a more fortuitous one hardly seems possible.
Ben reflects, “If it weren’t for the possibilities for sake I saw in Arkansas, I don’t think I ever would have delved into the beverage to the extent I did. The Arkansas connections pushed me at every step of this journey. And at every step, I didn’t know if that was going to be the end of it. But with each step, I kept pushing, to see how far it would go, thinking that maybe one day I would end up brewing sake in Arkansas. And there was always that next step.”
Hanamaki was home to the famous 20th century poet Kenji Miyazawa. Unusually, Hot Springs erected a statue in his honor to celebrate the sister-city relationship. It’s inscribed with words from one of his most famous poems, Ame ni mo makezu (Be not defeated by the rain). It begins, “Be not defeated by the rain/ Be not defeated by the wind/ Nor by the snow or summer heat/ Be strong in body.” It’s a poem about being one’s best self in the face of adversity. It’s about perseverance.
Ben left for Hanamaki in 2014 on a cultural activities visa, spending the first three months in a Japanese language school. He then labored a full brewing season at Nanbu Bijin, worked in the rice fields that summer for a local farming co-op, and then one more season at Nanbu Bijin. It was such hard work that on Sundays, he was too tired to do much of anything else. In 2016, he returned to Arkansas, ready to realize his dream.
“The business side of launching a brewery wasn’t working out and I was burning out on the process,” recalls Ben of that time. “It was about two years of struggle, and I was working the whole time at a restaurant where I had been before leaving for Nanbu Bijin. It was at the end of this struggle that I met Matt Bell. I had decided by that point that I was too burned out to continue so I told him about my idea.”
Like Hot Springs’ connection with Hanamaki and, by extension, Nanbu Bijin, Matt Bell was about as fortuitous an encounter as Ben could have had. An Arkansas native and a graduate of the University of Arkansas, he also wanted to do something special in and for the state.
Matt recalls, “I’d been an entrepreneur all my life. When Ben told me his story, it was one that I kept coming back to in my mind. This could be something big for the state of Arkansas. With both of us being from Arkansas, nobody could do it better.”
But with Ben having already said sayonara to his dream, he took a job in New York with an alcohol distributor known for its good sake portfolio. Matt was running a contracting company specializing in sustainable building consulting, in particular Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified construction. His company took on solar and energy efficiency improvement projects for buildings, typically working with government agencies, school districts, and public sector outfits.
“I grew that business pretty fast,” says Matt. “I managed the structure of the company: how to market our services, what our value-proposition was, why we were better than others. We became the largest of our kind in about four states in this region. When I had the opportunity to sell my business a couple of years ago, I said, ‘Okay’, and I took my chips off the table. But I’m not one to retire. Work is my hobby.”
Ben’s idea had stuck with him and so he decided to give it a go, realizing that Ben had burned out and that this ‘perfect’ brewery wouldn’t happen without some initiative from him.
“Selling my company allowed me to fund Origami Sake. It’s hard to get funding for a start-up and I understand why Ben struggled. But I knew we could do it right so I decided to put my money where my mouth is. I rolled the dice and told Ben this as well: ‘Yours is the only story I keep coming back to. I get business pitches all the time. There are no holes in this. We’ve got the water, the rice, the people. We can build the facility. Let’s then build the brand.’”
Ben admits being skeptical for months and months, telling Matt that he had moved on from his disappointment and was focusing on his life in New York. But Matt leaned in, sharing his own vision for what the brewery could be, and urged him to move back. When Ben visited and saw the building that Matt had plunked down cash for in late 2021, he realized that the dream was shaking its wings of the ashes.
“It’s a food-grade facility. It was better than any building I saw when I was looking,” says Ben.
Matt’s contribution wasn’t simply about the money, however; he brings considerable business acumen to the project, as evidenced by his previous success.
“Too much fell on Ben’s shoulders,” says Matt about Ben’s early struggles. “He knows the industry, the beverage, but I’d done the business side of things. I knew the ropes of going through a start-up. Trying to start a company and not getting traction can wear you down and frustrate you. Of course I don’t know nearly as much as Ben does about sake, but I’m invested in this personally.”
Matt also wracked his brain on a good name and came up with Origami. While he didn’t want to appropriate Japanese culture, he felt that origami is known to everyone. It’s an art and a good tie-in with artisanal sake. It also had a lot of branding potential. You can render just about anything into an origami image.
The building that houses Origami is considerable in size, having once been an industrial-scale spice blending facility. Matt notes that Hot Springs doesn’t have the density to drive taproom traffic and that he wanted a place where they could scale up their production capacity to eventually accommodate national distribution.
“Our model isn’t about being in Brooklyn or Nashville or Dallas. We wanted to be in the center of the United States, and make our business as efficient and scalable as possible to service all states,” says Matt.
That would also require a solid team and Matt, as the CEO, has done a respectable job of assembling members. As two examples, his marketing director, Brent Miller, was a successful creative director for a marketing company in Little Rock, where he had worked for roughly two decades. Matt convinced him to join the team, knowing that branding prowess in the beverage industry was essential. The brewery director, Eric Morris, came over from Lost Forty Brewing, a craft beer brewery that won mid-size brewery-of-the-year honors at the Great American Beer Festival (a supreme achievement in that industry). But perhaps the biggest surprise for many in the sake world would be how Origami lured Justin Potts to the project.
Potts is known to many as the co-host of Sake On Air, the official podcast of the Japan Sake & Shochu Makers Association. He’s also a certified lecturer for the Japan Sake Service Institute and holds both sakasho (basically, a sake and shōchū tasting specialist) and kikizakeshi (sake sommelier) certifications. For years, he’s worked in an advisory role for many breweries and specialty product companies in Japan. He brings considerable knowledge and a truly unique skill set to Origami.
As Matt tells the story, Arkansas has an economic development commission whose largest foreign investment comes from Japan due to the automotive-related industry in the state as well as steel. They reached out to the Arkansas Economic Development office in Tokyo with an unusual request. They had decided to bring in a brewing advisor on loan from Nanbu Bijin to help them with their launch–Ben is knowledgeable about brewing, but not master brewer level (yet) and Origami needed significant professional experience for a complex project like this. With that advisor, however, they also needed a translator with very specific knowledge of sake and industry terms.
Matt laughs and continues the story, “We thought it would be a needle in the haystack and wouldn’t find that person, but lo and behold, Justin emailed Ben saying that he had heard about the opportunity. When we met Justin, we talked about sourcing our rice locally from Isbell Farms, our water, our sister-city relations, the solar and sustainable aspects that I had built into Origami. He committed and flew here with his family from Japan within a week or so. He loved the story but also the opportunity to be a part of its creation. He’s been an integral figure in all of this.”
Origami had been brewing before Potts arrived, and had more or less dialed in the flavor profile they wanted for their flagship, A Thousand Cranes. But the team was developing more products and hoping to ramp up production. Potts couldn’t have arrived with his particular expertise at a better time.
Potts says, “We also wanted to create more opportunities here at Origami that other producers in America weren’t able to enjoy. We wanted to bring knowledge from Japan, from the breweries and organizations I had connections with. By leveraging my skills and network, we could help establish new standards here for brewing.”
As one example, Origami is the first to use sophisticated lab equipment from Kyoto Electronic Manufacturing–and they have a dedicated staff member to operate the lab. The company wanted to introduce its equipment and services in the US, too. Potts helped arrange their placement, thus creating a win for the brewery, for the company, and for other sake breweries that might want to take the same path and learn from them. Technology and equipment–and the language ability to process all that–basically goes through the ‘Portal of Potts’.
“Beyond ordering equipment or fabricating stuff for which we can’t find local solutions, I work with toji in Japan to address problems we face. I think, ‘This brewery or brewer might have insight into this particular issue.’ So far, everyone has been nothing but supportive.”
Potts’ ability to ‘translate’ such information into the brewery situation also owes to his own experience in breweries. For three brewing seasons between 2015 and 2018, he worked in famed Chiba brewery Kidoizumi (see ST14). His motivation was to better understand the inner-workings of a brewery because he had been working heavily in the sake industry with promotion, brand development, and education.
“Artisanal producers make high-quality products, but it’s difficult for many to get these out into the world. It’s easy for somebody from L.A. or New York to tell them what to do. I wanted to understand what it felt like as a brewery that employs a brewing staff of four or five people, and has been doing so for 150 years, but doesn’t have that experience. I wanted to understand what it meant to take that marketing advice and see how you might actualize that inside the brewery.”
Such a role pulls Potts in many directions. One day he is in the brewery with all the brewing staff spreading out rice for cooling as they wait for a machine they ordered called a hōreiki, which does the work for them. Another day, he may be on the phone with folks in Japan, working through something they’ve encountered in the brewing process.
“Our advisor, Tamakawa, came from Nanbu Bijin in March of 2023 and we’ve been setting up more equipment, but the wait time is sometimes very long. So if we can’t wait, what’s the best version of what we can do at our current scale? There’s a version where you could spend two or three years planning this all out, doing the schematics, et cetera. And there’s a version where you jump in, get the core components, and start brewing, figuring it out along the way. That’s the approach we’ve taken and we’re making it work.”
The equipment that they started out with turned out to be much too big for a practical launch and scaling up (they suffered some expensive mistakes early on). Their original shubo tanks ended up becoming fermentation tanks. And then, by another stroke of luck, they were able to acquire medium-scale tanks and equipment from a US brewery that shuttered. The stepping stones have been set, but the way forward is still slippery and requires constant adjustments to balance.
“One example is our nigori,” says Potts. “We have clear ideas as to what it should be like in its final stage. So I gave Tamakawa an example of what we were shooting for and then reached out to the toji in Japan who had made that sake. Within twenty-four hours that toji gave us everything we needed, including the recipe and how to brew it. That ended up informing the equipment we purchased and how we brew it. Tamakawa has a broad view of things, whereas many toji may have never worked in a scenario outside of the one they’re in. Not many can consult on the unusual situation we have here.”
An unusual situation, for sure, and yet also one primed with unprecedented potential in the context of American sake. Ben and Matt are a contrast in personality and yet complement each other’s skills and interests in key ways. The former is a cerebral type, mostly focused internally; the latter, a shaker and mover, looking outward into the market. Potts helps ensure the machine and its systems are being built out in the best ways possible. And, of course, there is the talented team assembled for the mission. Those large-scale tanks that the brewery started out with and which the team is scaling up to will be critical before too long. Arkansas has something really special unfolding here. Or rather, folding into something exquisite. Its wings have plenty of lift now.
