Being a 41-year-old male puts me at the end of my yakudoshi, a period when Japanese believe all kinds of calamity are due to befall me and mine. Running to form, a family crisis meant I had to fly home to Britain on Dec. 23. I was back at work before the new year, but these few days off were still more than the total in my preceding 16 winters as a sake brewer. So, for the first time since joining the bottom rung of an old-fashioned brewing team in 1991, I found myself coming into a sake brewery in winter from the outside, so to speak.

Arriving at the Kinoshita Shuzo brewery in Kyotango, Kyoto Prefecture — on the coast of the Sea of Japan — I trudged through a good foot of snow, looking up at the variegated pattern of the pine trees bearing their fresh, white loads on the slope of the mountain behind the brewery, the source of the water we use in our sake.

Under the brewery eaves was a shaggy-looking globe made of cedar needles. With links to sake brewing's ancient religious roots, such sugidama greet visitors at the gateway to pretty much every sake brewery. Like the mountain, it rarely registers in the day-to-day bustle of the winter season, but my absence had given me fresh eyes.