Regional brewers determined to create premium terroir sake faced an extraordinarily complex contracting problem. They needed to convince farmers to grow unusual varieties of delicate and temperamental sake-optimized rice. They needed to convince the farmers to lavish on the rice with high levels of care. Yet they did not address the complex contracting problem with complex agreements. Instead, they negotiated extraordinarily simple contracts: terminable at the end of the year, paying extremely high prices, and embedded – once again – within a dense network of deliberately created social capital.