The breweries stand near the sea because of the water. Nada Gogō is the collective name for five brewing districts — Nishi-gō, Mikage-gō, Uozaki-gō, Nishinomiya-gō and Imazu-gō — where the breweries use groundwater running down from the Rokkō range and lie in a line along the coast. The brewing water, called miyamizu, is drawn from beneath this narrow strip, and protecting the wells that supply it is an active concern rather than a historical note.

The region received a geographical indication for its sake in June 2018. At the museums attached to some of the houses you can see brewing tools and cooperage displays, and taste what is made. Hanshin line stations are close, Osaka is about twenty minutes away, and there is employment in brewing and in food manufacturing, so this is a producing district that is also, unremarkably, a commuter belt. The breweries sit by the water for a second reason as well: the sake was shipped from here to Edo by boat, and being near the shore mattered when the product had to travel.

Sake tastes of the water it is made with, which means a brewing district cannot move away from its source. The particular condition here — a mountain range close behind, and its filtered water reachable just before the coast — is what strung these five districts out in a single line rather than clustering them around a town centre. On a map the region looks oddly long and thin for a producing area of its size, stretched along the coast instead of gathered around a centre. It is following the shape of an aquifer, and has been doing so since long before anyone could draw one.