Yuasa Soy Sauce

To understand Yuasa Soy Sauce, it helps to understand the place it comes from. Yuasa in Wakayama is regarded as one of the birthplaces of Japanese soy sauce, with the tradition traced to around 1254, when the method for making Kinzanji miso was brought to the region. During fermentation, a flavourful liquid known as tamari collected from the miso; refining that liquid is traditionally associated with the development of soy sauce in Yuasa, from where the craft eventually spread more widely through Japan.

The family behind today’s producer traces its business to 1881, when Sumi Shinko began selling handmade Kinzanji miso. Now led by the fifth generation, Yuasa Soy Sauce continues to work with traditional fermentation and wooden cedar barrels while exploring how that heritage can be expressed in distinctive contemporary shoyu.

This is why Gusta carries Yuasa. Soy sauce can easily be treated as a background seasoning, but at this level it becomes an ingredient with its own fermentation, raw materials, ageing and sense of place. Bottlings such as Kuyo Murasaki, connected directly to the rare tamari produced during Kinzanji-miso making, and the limited-production Rosanjin soy sauce offer an opportunity to taste shoyu as a craft in its own right rather than simply as salt and umami in a recipe.