Iio Jozo Pure Premium Rice Vinegar
500 ml bottle - Japan
ingredients: water, rice
Iio Jozo is a family-owned vinegar company that was founded in 1893 and is located just outside the seaside town of Miyazu, Japan.
They are known for producing the highest-quality rice vinegar in Japan, which they achieve by using the best ingredients and time-tested traditional methods.
Iio Jozo controls the process from start to finish, even growing some of their own rice, and they use only 100% new-harvest pesticide-free rice to make their vinegar.
Iio-san, the third generation of the Iio family, noticed 50 years ago that the pesticides used by local rice farmers were killing every living thing in their paddies. He convinced some of the local farmers to grow their rice without using pesticides, and to this day, Iio Jozo continues to use only pesticide-free rice in their vinegar.
Today, Iio Jozo is run by Akihiro Iio, the fifth generation president, who has maintained his family's commitment to traditional vinegar making while keeping an eye on the future. They produce amazing vinegar by controlling and perfecting every step in the process of making vinegar.
To make rice vinegar, Iio Jozo ferments the premium rice using traditional methods to make sake. They use a hand-powered wooden press to squeeze the sake out of the fermented rice.
It takes about 100 days on average for the living “good" bacteria in the vinegar mother to ferment the sake into vinegar. However, Iio-san ages this vinegar for 8 months to give it a more rounded and appealing flavor.
In total, it takes about a year for Iio Jozo to make rice vinegar, which is significantly longer than the huge vinegar companies, which can produce a batch of their rice vinegar in a day.
Iio Jozo also uses a higher amount of rice in their vinegar compared to other producers. According to Japanese law, to call a product ‘rice vinegar,' you have to use at least 40 grams of rice to produce 1 liter of vinegar.
However, Iio Jozo uses 200 grams/liter for their ‘standard’ rice vinegar and 320 grams/liter for their ‘premium’ product, which results in a superior quality rice vinegar.