Sake was first poured in Vienna in 1873, at the Weltausstellung, in a pavilion that most visitors walked past on their way to somewhere else. The city tasted it, filed it away, and did nothing about it for a century and a half.
We began in 2021, under the name Sake Wien: a cellar in Vienna, a great many books, and four years of test brews that mostly taught us what not to do. On 1 October 2025 – World Sake Day, traditionally the start of the brewing season in Japan – we reopened as Kura Wien and started brewing commercially.
It made us Vienna’s first kura, and one of a small handful of sake breweries in Europe.
From a first test brew to a kura with a season, a name and a shelf in selected restaurants and stores.
The beginning: the brewery, built from scratch, and the decision to learn this properly rather than approximate it. Four years of research, brewing and refinement in a city with no sake tradition to lean on.
01
Matthias Schweger, who initiated the original Sake Wien project in 2021, spent time learning at Daimon Brewery in Osaka. Along the way, Yasutaka Daimon, Marcus Consolini and Kjetil Jikiun generously shared their knowledge and experience, helping lay the foundations for what would later become Kura Wien.
02
World Sake Day. We opened a new chapter as Kura Wien on Barmherzigengasse in Vienna’s third district, with friends, supporters and a fresh shubo in the tank.
03
Our sake is slowly finding its way beyond Vienna, to selected restaurants and sake shops in Austria, Germany, Holland and Italy. Small steps, but important ones for us.
04
The only European brewery invited. Three bottles carried to Japan – Junmai Muroka, Marumero and Junmai Muroka Seishu – and poured for the people whose craft we borrowed.
05
The kamidana above the clean room. Borrowed, like most of what we do, and taken seriously.
A kura is a set of hands before it is a building.
The brewmaster decides when the rice is cool enough, when the moto is ready, and when the moromi has said everything it is going to say. Markus Csenar has that job, and the last word on every tank.
01
The brewery hands. Washing, steaming, turning, carrying – the unglamorous two thirds of sake, done at six in the morning because the rice does not wait. Fred Kranich, one of the three behind Kura Ferments, is as likely to be on the hose as at a desk.
02
For most of Japanese history women were kept out of the kura. That rule never crossed the border with us, and the cellar is better for it.
03
We started with a Junmai Nama Genshu Muroka – unpasteurised, undiluted and without charcoal filtration, sake in a particularly direct and exposed form. Since then, we have slowly widened the range.
Kinshachi 1873, the golden one, named for Vienna’s first encounter with sake at the 1873 Weltausstellung. Aoshachi, the blue one, brewed for summer. Midorishachi, the green one, still finding its shape. Other shachis will follow.
01
Quince and aged sake from our brewing archive, macerated together. “Heat without fire,” as we wrote at the time – and the bottle that travelled with us to Tokyo.
02
We are about to learn the art of gentle pasteurisation, while exploring sparkling sake, ageing some of what we brew, and occasionally taking sake in unexpected directions. The Junmai Nama Genshu remains at the centre of the kura; it is no longer the whole of it.
03
“Unconventional, for the sake of tradition.”
