A short documentary about Tomasu

Some of you may have come across this short documentary on social media. Porsche Netherlands made this film about Tomasu last year, but we hadn’t shared it ourselves yet. So here it is. We’re curious what you think.

The film takes a closer look at how we work, from growing our ingredients to brewing our soy sauce. It explores why we keep every step in our own hands, what we learn along the way, and why we believe our best soy sauce is still to be made. We hope we’ll always feel that way. There will always be something to ask, something to explore, something to improve. It’s never finished. Thankfully.

The story behind the film goes back a little further. In 2023, we first got to know the Porsche team when they visited to make a video about how Tomasu began. During filming, they noticed one of our barrels: number 911.

Every barrel gets a unique number. We hadn’t given 911 any extra thought; it was simply part of the same sequence as all the other barrels. For Porsche, of course, it’s the number of their most iconic model. A coincidence that sparked the idea of doing something together with barrel 911. Once we started talking about it, neither of us could let it go.

That idea became the starting point for a short doc, with barrel 911 as the reason to tell the wider story of Tomasu.

It’s a story about curiosity for every step of the process. Taking care of the soil, growing soybeans and wheat, making koji, observing the fermentation and letting ourselves be surprised by what happens. About trying things, asking questions and gradually finding our own way. Each barrel gives us something to taste, something to learn, and something to take into the next one. Perhaps that’s why it clicked with Porsche. They know what it means to keep refining something without ever calling it finished. They’ve been working on the 911 for over sixty years, and they’re not done yet either.

We’re happy to finally share it with you.

So, what happened to barrel 911?

The soybeans were harvested in 2021 at the Westdijk in Mijnsheerenland, the wheat in 2022 at the nearby Stougjesdijk. Together with grey sea salt from Guérande and water, they started fermenting on 11 April 2023 in a former bourbon barrel. What followed were 126 weeks of fermentation, care and attention. And believe it or not, the soy sauce was eventually bottled, once again by coincidence, on 11 September 2025. On 9/11, that is.

We bottled the entire barrel in a limited edition exclusively for Porsche, so it never made it to the shops. Hoping to find a bottle? You’ll have to ask them. ;)