As they reach their late 60s, many people contemplate their retirement: traveling the world, taking up new hobbies, checking off a bucket list. But for Richard Geoffroy, who retired as Dom Pérignon’s longtime chef de cave in 2018 at the age of 64, it was time to consider a different path—his third career.
“I believe in successive lives,” Geoffroy says. “I’d been through a life in medicine, a life in winemaking.”
It’s this instinct that led Geoffroy to leave Dom Pérignon with the intent to blend Japan’s signature beverage, sake, bringing his IWA 5 sake project to life with a force of will that attracted ready investors from Japan and abroad.
“All life long, I’ve felt that I have to keep on, even if it’s not a quest per se. But I was so happy with Dom Pérignon. I had very privileged access to anything a winemaker would dream of. I’m half-joking, but I started to feel really in danger. Moët Hennessy and Dom Pérignon were giving me everything I was asking for, without challenge! I said to myself, ‘Uh-oh.’ ”
For almost three decades, Geoffroy, now 70, crafted the style of Champagne’s most iconic wine, notably seeing the vintage-dated tête de cuvée through early indications of climate change and other changes to the landscape of the region. Geoffroy was a medical doctor before joining the winemaking team at Moët & Chandon in 1985, at the age of 41, and he was named chef de cave just five years later.
“Frankly, after 34 years of Champagne making—28 at Dom Pérignon—I said done,” Geoffroy says. “I checked that box and decided I need to reset for new challenges. It’s a way of aging gracefully, of not drying out. Everyone has a philosophy of aging—mine is to keep very active through projects and challenges.”
During his tenure at Dom Pérignon, Geoffroy enjoyed ample exposure to Japan, which grew to become Champagne’s third largest export market in 2023, according to Champagne’s governing body, the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne.
“I had access to Japan in a big way,” Geoffroy says. “So many great connections, friendships, leading me through the layers, through the maze of Japan—getting lost in Japan in some ways and pretty quickly running into sake. Because sake is a beverage but so much more than a beverage. Even those in Japan who are not drinking sake at all today have an opinion on sake.”
Sake is intricately tied to Japan’s history and culture, yet its consumption went into decline domestically after World War II, surpassed by beer consumption for the first time in the 1960s. After that, the number of sake breweries began to shrink—from more than 3,200 in 1975 to about 1,200 today.
“I was very interested to highlight this cultural element of Japan,” Geoffroy says, explaining that what began as his cheerful, if somewhat uneducated, sake consumption quickly grew to a greater appreciation of the beverage. “I was not thinking about being part of the game at first. I just thought sake could make a louder statement to the world.” While sake exports have grown dramatically in the past decade, still less than 5 percent of Japan’s total production is currently exported. “It’s something I’m very keen on—the capacity of local products to make it to the wider world.”
After the initial seed was planted in Geoffroy’s mind, he quickly put his years of experience at Dom Pérignon to work as he explored the idea of creating a sake. He saw parallels between sake and wine: origin and terroir, fermentation and blending, tradition and innovation. The two beverages also shared a similar storytelling component. Already confident that sake could find a strong audience outside of Japan, Geoffroy extrapolated that wine drinkers were the ones who would help make that happen.
“They’re close,” he says. “The wine community is already disposed to go to the sake community, but the sake community doesn’t know how to go to wine. In all humility, I think I can bridge the two communities for the better. It might make the wine community have an even a higher appreciation for wine.”
“Starting up in Japan is quite an adventure,” says Geoffroy, who likens the work he did bringing multiple personalities together for the creation of IWA 5 to that of assembling vintages of Dom Pérignon. “It’s about being able to federate people under one idea.” He ultimately collaborated with three Japanese partners: Kengo Kuma and Ryuichiro Masuda, and later, Masato Yabuta.
Kuma is a celebrated architect with recent projects including the Rolex Building in Dallas and the Japan National Stadium, constructed for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Kuma also provided an introduction for Geoffroy to another key partner, Ryuichiro Masuda. As CEO of the sake company Masuda Shuzo, which was established in 1893, Masuda brought five generations of experience to the project as well as the suggestion for a future home for IWA 5: his native region of Toyama.
The third key individual of the team, Masato Yabuta, is a toji, or master sake brewer, who makes the sake that Geoffroy then blends into IWA 5. Yabuta is a member of the Tanba Toji, which is one of the preeminent guilds for sake brewers in Japan, with experience at Kenbishi Sake and other breweries.
After securing 25 acres of land just outside of the village of Shiraiwa, more than 200 miles northwest of Tokyo, Kuma began construction of a kura, or brewery. It was the first new construction of a kura in Japan in about 60 years, since many of the country’s recent sake labels are made in existing facilities, à la Bordeaux’s garagistes of the 2000s.
“There’s so much that’s contracted out for making other sakes,” Geoffroy says. “We needed to be way more authentic, with that sense of belonging—to the place, to the community, to Japan, to the industry—to be contributing.” Construction of the visually stunning kura, named Shiraiwa for the nearby village, was completed in 2022.
Right from the start, Geoffroy realized he would need to push the boundaries of classic sake production.
“About half the vocabulary for describing sake is how it flows down the throat, and the goal is to be waterlike,” says Geoffroy, who wanted to achieve “weightless elegance,” but with more intensity. “I’m pushing it, because the goal is to be transmissible to the world. I want something with more presence—very balanced and complex—but enjoyable in different situations, with different foods, and for new consumers.”
Like Geoffroy, Yabuta, 52, saw the IWA 5 project as a new challenge that would give him forward momentum in life. But Geoffroy admits that it was challenging at first, as he doesn’t speak Japanese and Yabuta doesn’t speak English or French. Despite the language barrier, the duo has found a way to communicate ideas. “Intellectually, we are in fusion,” says Geoffroy of his colleague. “It’s very emotional.”
IWA 5 uses three different rice varieties from four different sources: Yamada Nishiki rice from Hyogo and Toyama prefectures; Omachi from Okayama prefecture; and Gohyakumangoku from Toyama prefecture.
Geoffroy likens the rice varieties to clones of a single grape rather than to multiple individual varieties. Although IWA 5 relies on four distinct sources, he doesn’t see a direct correlation to the site-specific terroirs of Champagne. “There’s a regional rice terroir, but it’s without the climats and plots of premium winemaking.”
Geoffroy believes that the true terroir for sake is the production site itself. “It’s about the brewery, the water you’re working with,” he says. “It’s about the people, the importance of the toji, the indigenous micro-flora, even the layout of the kura. I think conditions impact the final quality and expression of the sakes.”
After polishing the rice, the first step in sake production, Yabuta uses five different sake and wine yeast strains and three different styles of motos, or yeast starters. The different rice sources inoculated with the varying yeast strains via the different motos are each fermented separately. Employing separate fermentations is a common technique in winemaking, but it’s virtually unheard of for sake production because of the added labor.
Separate vinification brings another “winelike” influence to IWA 5 sake, allowing Geoffroy to put his true expertise into action: blending. At Dom Pérignon, he produced a vintage-specific Champagne by blending a minimum of 100 individual base wines from three grape varieties and at least 20 different villages. At IWA 5, the numbers are somewhat less intimidating, but Geoffroy still blends about 40 individual sakes plus reserve sakes from previous iterations of IWA 5.
“Sake is not the same as Champagne base wines,” Geoffroy explains. “You have to get familiar with the intrinsic, highly specialized nature of the components. But the principles of blending, when it comes to the balance of salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami—all of this translates. Personally, I’m even more aware of these fundamental tastes when blending IWA than Champagne.”
IWA 5, a sake in the junmai daiginjo style, is released in annual iterations, each based largely on the rice harvested from the most recent year, much like a multi-vintage Champagne. The iteration is indicated on the back of the dark, Marc Newson–designed bottle with the term “Assemblage” and a corresponding number; Assemblage 4 is the most recent iteration on the market. Each year’s assemblage is approved by a Japanese regulatory board. The use of a French term on a Japanese product was met with initial resistance, but now a growing number of competitors have adopted the same verbiage on their own packaging, even if most assemble raw product and then ferment, instead of fermenting then blending, in the French way.
For Geoffroy, who recently finished the blending for Assemblage 6, one of the greatest surprises has been IWA 5’s capacity for bottle aging. “It’s against all odds. The familiar statement is that sakes don’t age, but IWA sakes, they do.” Geoffroy speculates that it might be either the inclusion of wine yeasts or the tension brought by the post-fermentation blending process—or even another factor of which he’s as yet unaware.
“I have no rational explanation, but that notion of bottle maturation is extraordinary,” he adds. Based on this realization, IWA 5 is producing a new label called Reserves, a blend made exclusively from reserve sakes. (It’s only available in Asia to date, with plans for a future U.S. release.)
The timing couldn’t have been worse for IWA 5’s debut of Assemblage 1 in 2020. But from the beginning, Geoffroy leaned into his established relationships with chefs to help put IWA 5 on the map, reinforcing its ability to transcend the pigeonhole of sake as a beverage incapable of aging or of pairing with elevated cuisine. By the time IWA 5 launched in the U.S., in the fall of 2022, it was “very well-established in Japan,” according to Geoffroy, and already available in 31 countries around the globe.
Priced about $180 per 720ml bottle, IWA 5 is something of a leap of faith for anyone other than true sake lovers. It’s a fact that’s readily apparent to Geoffroy and the sales team in the U.S. “It’s hard to sell something that’s ultrapremium and educational at the same time it’s tricky,” concedes Arnaud Brachet, president of IWA 5’s U.S. importer, ABCK Corp. But Brachet reports that IWA 5 now has more than 400 points of distribution in multiple U.S. states. It is generating regular inquiries and a surprising amount of enthusiasm, especially from restaurants. “It is the chefs themselves who are really excited about it,” Brachet says. “IWA goes straight to flavors, allowing chefs to play with it a lot. I think it opens new culinary experiences.”
Brachet also credits Geoffroy’s ability to bridge the gap between sake and wine, as he always hoped to do. “IWA speaks the language of wine drinkers, while sometimes traditional sake is hard to translate,” he says, referring to the terms on the label. “Richard understood that it’s so important to speak the language of wine lovers. Yes, it’s a sake, but I don’t think most people see it that way. They see it as a broader experience within their wine experience.”
For Geoffroy, the creation of a sake has been an incredible and fulfilling journey so far. “My connection to Japan is stronger than ever—it’s the third part of my life,” he says with a laugh, then adds, “It’s an important part, maybe the most important one.”
Geoffroy is pleased with his product and his ambition to bring sake to a wider audience. “IWA is not only making singular sake, but it’s able to reach out, to bring a moment of ‘Japan-ness’ out to the world, and at the same time to contribute to Japan,” he says. “Our Japanese friends can be reserved, not taking a big, outward stance. We think with IWA we’re making sake a little bit louder.”
At a time when many others would be winding down, Geoffroy continues to grow, through new activity and new challenges. “I’m figuring out so many things as I work,” he says, explaining that he’s on “a different path” from the 1,200 years of sake production that came before. “My path is different. It’s a slow process of learning and experimenting—and it’s so intellectually stimulating.”
