Previously.

I was in the automotive business in Detroit in the eighties.

And so in the eighties the Japanese car companies were all looking at building factories in the U.S.

So I spent a lot of time in Japan as a young man eating, doing business, working more with Japanese car companies and going out to eat some more.

You know, Id wander into grocery stores, just out of curiosity when I had some time off and youd see like this whole row of different soy sauces and its like, “Well, what do all those do?” So occasionally I'd buy some and bring them home.

Eventually I wanted to try and duplicate that just out of curiosity.

And, how can you kind of replicate that type of soy sauce versus the more industrial soy sauces that we get in the U.S.?

So, soy sauce in Japan is acutually, relatively historically recent.

It was imported from China about 700 years ago.

The history of soy sauce is: we grew a lot of soy beans in China, people stored them, some of them molded, they probably ate them anyway, a little speculation, but they figured out, “Well those werent that bad, they tasted pretty good.

“How do we do more of that?” And so, eventually, the Chinese figured out how to culture a specific mold to make what is Chinese style soy sauces and Chinese style fermented beans which eventually made their way to Japan.

There are over a thousand soy sauce makers in Japan.

In the U.S.

there are like 6 or 7 of us including Kikkoman.

The original soy sauce formulations always used whole soy beans.

As soy sauce was industrialized, you know, the industrialization productivity cost out drove the use of what's called, de-fatted soybeans.

And de-fatted soybeans are soybeans that have been harvested and pressed for oil.

And then, whats leftover from making oil is that de-fatted soybean.

See ‘cause that oil contributes a lot to the flavor profile of those artisanal soy sauces that I recalled in Japan.

So the other component is just slow brewing it.

So, actually fermenting the soy beans for a long period of time, for like a year.

Each of these barrels is like our kids, I think we know them pretty intimitely in terms of what theyre going through in their life-cycle.

And then well down-select one that we say, “That one is gonna be pressed because thats gonna be a very special soy sauce.” Food is really a form of love.

If you're cooking for somebody, right, you're cooking for your family, or cooking for your friends or you're having a dinner party.

You want to have something that really expresses, your love of having these guests in your in your home.

The ability to reach for ingredients like this is really what this business is all about.