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Never Lie to a Swan — Swan Lake Beer’s Golden Swan Lake Ale x Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”

日本語で読む  |  This is the English version of a bilingual article.

Today’s Pairing

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The Story of the Brewery

Swan Lake Beer's Golden Swan Lake Ale from Niigata
In Agano City, Niigata, right next to Lake Hyoko — a well-known landing site for wintering swans — sits the Hyoko Yashiki no Mori Brewery. Tenchokaku Co., Ltd. began brewing beer here in 1997, inside the former residence of the Igarashi family, wealthy landowning village headmen from the Meiji and Taisho eras who also helped found the 116th National Bank (later Shibata Bank). Their mansion and garden, spread across roughly 16,500 square meters, have since been maintained as “Igarashi-tei Garden” and were registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2019. The beer is brewed inside that same historic estate.

One of its signature beers, Golden Swan Lake Ale, is a golden ale prized for its clear, bright color, floral aroma and light, easy-drinking body. It won gold at the 2019 Japan Great Beer Awards and silver in both 2023 and 2024, part of a run of steady recognition at beer competitions at home and abroad — Swan Lake Beer as a whole has picked up more than 120 medals across international competitions to date.

The Story of the Land

The brewery’s own name, “Swan Lake,” is simply an English rendering of Lake Hyoko itself. Hyoko is a Ramsar-registered wetland, famous nationwide as a major wintering site for swans — every year between October and March, roughly 5,000 waterfowl, mostly tundra swans, arrive here. What put Hyoko on the national map was a single event in 1954, when a local resident named Jusaburo Yoshikawa became the first person in Japan to successfully hand-feed wild swans. He is said to have believed that “to earn an animal’s trust, you must never lie to it, not even once — rather than simply feeding the birds, you must become a swan yourself.” That philosophy, and the role that came with it, has since passed down through three generations of so-called “swan uncles,” who still feed the birds three times a day.

The Story of the Music

“Swan Lake” is a ballet score composed by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky between 1875 and 1876, and first performed on March 4, 1877, at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Set in Germany, it tells the tragic love story of Princess Odette — cursed by the sorcerer Rothbart to live a double life, a swan by day and human only at night — and Prince Siegfried. The only way to break the curse is for a man who has never sworn love to another to pledge his love to Odette forever. But at the fateful ball, Rothbart tricks Siegfried into pledging himself instead to Odile, the Black Swan disguised to look exactly like her. The “Scene,” with its famous oboe melody in Act II — often simply called the “Swan Theme” — is one of the most widely loved passages in the entire ballet repertoire.

Why This Pairing

Both center on a swan’s form concealing a truth that isn’t visible on the surface. Odette, in “Swan Lake,” looks to anyone watching by day like nothing more than a swan — yet hidden inside that form is her real identity as a human princess. The swans of Lake Hyoko aren’t just migratory birds passing through, either. The scene there today rests on more than 70 years of trust built up since that first successful feeding in 1954, carried forward across three generations of people who held to Jusaburo Yoshikawa’s principle that you must never lie to an animal. In both cases, the swan’s simple, familiar shape holds a story built up slowly, underneath.

There’s a second echo in the names themselves. The brewery that makes Golden Swan Lake Ale took the name of its neighboring lake and simply translated it into English, calling itself “Swan Lake.” Tchaikovsky’s ballet, too, is set on a lake in Germany, yet the whole world knows it by the same plain words — “Swan Lake.” Neither one dresses up a name everyone already knows; both just hold it up as it is.

Where to Find This Beer

The Rakuten Ichiba link below is an affiliate link.

These are Japanese storefronts. If you are visiting the brewery, drinking it fresh at their own taproom is by far the best option.

🌡️ How to serve it：Chill it well, to around 6°C. Pour it into a tall pilsner glass or a narrow-mouthed tumbler to show off its clear golden color and let the floral aroma rise.

Pairing Snacks Worth Trying

Swan Lake Beer's Golden Swan Lake Ale served with local dishes

  • Kaki no Tane
    A signature Niigata rice cracker snack. Its sharp chili spice and crisp bite pair well with the ale’s light bitterness.
  • Kurosaki-cha Mame (edamame)
    A highly aromatic variety of edamame said to originate in the Kurosaki district of Niigata City. Simply salt-boiled, its fragrance brings out the beer’s floral hop character.

A note on the science: the saltiness of edamame and rice crackers is known to be cut cleanly by carbonation and by the iso-alpha acids that give hops their bitterness, refreshing the palate for the next bite. That interplay between salt and hops comes through especially clearly in a golden ale like this one, where malt sweetness stays understated.

Visiting the Brewery

Hyoko Yashiki no Mori Brewery (Swan Lake Beer)
345-1 Kanaya-Kawabata, Agano City, Niigata. About a 10-minute drive from Mizuhara Station on the JR Uetsu Line, or about 15 minutes by car from the Yasuda IC on the Ban-etsu Expressway.
The Restaurant Swan Lake, on the same grounds, lets you eat while watching the brewing tanks (open 11:00–21:00, closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays).

Sights Nearby

  • Lake Hyoko / Agano City | ~5 min by car from the brewery
    A Ramsar-registered wetland where about 5,000 swans, mostly tundra swans, arrive every year between October and March. In 1954, a local resident named Jusaburo Yoshikawa became the first person in Japan to successfully hand-feed wild swans here, and that role has since passed down through three generations of “swan uncles.”
  • Mizuhara Daikansho Historic Park / Agano City | ~10 min by car from the brewery
    A reconstruction of the local magistrate’s office first established in 1746 on the site of Mizuhara Castle, when the area was placed under direct shogunate control. It recreates the hall where tax collection and local administration were handled, along with the outdoor court used to interrogate suspects.

Hot Springs Nearby

  • Murasugi Onsen Public Bathhouse, Yakushi-no-Yu / Agano City (Goto Onsen area) | ~15–20 min by car from the brewery
    A public bathhouse at Murasugi Onsen, considered one of Japan’s three great radium hot springs. Open year-round, 300 yen for adults, and traditionally said to help with women’s health — hence its other name, “the hot spring of fertility.”

Opening hours, closing days and day-use bathing availability can change. Please check each facility’s official information before visiting.

A Quick Glossary of Beer Terms

  • Craft beer: Beer made by small breweries that put the character of the maker front and centre, as opposed to the uniformity of mass production.
  • Ale: Beer made through “top fermentation,” where yeast works near the surface of the liquid at close to room temperature. It tends to produce fruit-like aromas and a fuller body.
  • Hops: The cones of a climbing plant, which give beer its bitterness and aroma. Depending on the variety, that aroma can read as citrus, tropical fruit or open grassland.
  • Malt: Germinated barley. It forms the foundation of a beer’s sweetness, colour and body; how deeply it is roasted determines colour and toastiness.
  • ABV: Alcohol By Volume. Around 5% is standard for beer; anything above 8% is considered a stronger, more full-bodied style.
  • IBU: An international scale for measuring bitterness. Around 10 registers as barely bitter at all; above 60 puts you in clearly bitter IPA territory.
  • Local beer (ji-beer): The name given to beers that sprang up around Japan after a 1994 revision to the liquor tax law allowed small-scale brewing. These days most are called “craft beer” instead.

Sources

If you notice any errors in this article, please don’t hesitate to reach out at info@soundrecords.jp.

Read this article in Japanese: 白鳥にだけは、嘘をつかない

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