Kubota Manjyu Junmai Daiginjo

Manjyu sits at the top of Asahi Shuzo's Kubota lineup — the name roughly translates to “10,000 celebrations,” which tells you where the brewery's confidence comes from. Made in Nagaoka, Niigata, with the brewery's signature Gohyakumangoku rice, it's the bottle responsible for putting Kubota on the map back in 1985 and has collected a long string of gold medals since. Expect a plush, layered texture that keeps revealing new notes sip after sip rather than showing everything at once. If you're going to spend on one sake to impress someone who already knows sake, this is a fair bet.