Sake Field Notes # 1:

A Journey to Japan

Our sake buyer Phil Romero's Japanese travel journal featuring industry experts & the people & places that make nihonshu...

Here at The Wine Source, education, enthusiasm, and an emphasis on curating

our selections is vital. A big part of that is tasting and sampling the bottles that find

their way to our shelves. So inevitably,

sake and I faced off for another at-bat.

This time, it was a home run!

Don't worry folks, this ends the baseball metaphor portion of this newsletter, I swear. The few bottles we sampled were unlike any sake I had before. Complex, dry, delicate, umami driven, beautiful. My interest was piqued and the sake journey began. The bottles are now rotating staples in the sake fridge (chat with me in the store and I’ll reveal all of the bottles), but one of the sakes was a humble and lovely Junmai from Masumi, Okuden Kantsukuri or “Mirror of Truth.” Stick with me here for the rest of this newsletter, but spoiler: 

Drop by this Friday from 5-7pm

to sample this very sake! 

Several books, two professional courses/certificates, and many tastings later, things were at a bit of a plateau for me. While we are lucky to have a wide range of wonderful nihonshu* available in Maryland, not being able to see the breweries, the production process, or experiencing the culture firsthand felt like a big part of my sake education was missing. Fortunately, in October of last year Japan re-opened their borders following cautious pandemic restrictions. Did you hear the sake nerds rejoice? I did, and soon after some rumblings were getting out about some exciting in-person travel programs returning.

 *Nihonshu is the more accurate Japanese word for what we call sake, but for our purposes here let’s just stick with sake! No need to complicate things and most folks in the industry just say sake anyway!

The one I was most excited about was run by John Gauntner, one of the most recognized non-Japanese experts in the field. If you’re interested in learning more about sake without struggling through Google translate, his books are required reading. I previously took an online course with John and it was a great educational experience, so I was ready to jump at the idea of an in-person course with visits to several sake breweries. With the help of

The Wine Source, I was able to go this January, during the height of the traditional brewing season! Now I'm ready to bring my

sake journey to you.

We started off the class with a refresher on sake production and classifications. To keep things simple and without getting into the weeds here, sake is closest to beer in production methods. However, it is uniquely brewed, and as such is truly its own category. The ingredients in Junmai sake* consist of three things: rice, water, and koji (rice inoculated with a mold, aspergillus orzyae). Each grain of rice contains a starchy center (shinpaku) that must be broken down to create sugar in order for the yeast to consume it and make alcohol. That’s where that moldy rice known as koji comes in. The koji, water, and regular rice mix together and the starches are broken down into sugar. Yeast is added and boom, about two months later you have sake. Press, filter, pasteurize, bottle. Kanpai! That’s about as barebones of a description as we can do here.

*Non-Junmai sake, or aruten, has an addition of Brewer’s alcohol.

A completely acceptable and common addition, but let’s just talk about Junmai to keep things simple.

We were fortunate enough to hear two guest lecturers, Shuso Imada of the JSS gave a lecture about the state of the sake industry and author/industry veteran Haruo Matsuzaki spoke on the regionality of sake and the growing movement to return to traditional regional styles. 

Regionality in sake, or stealing a wine term, terroir, is a bit tough to pin down. Traditionally sake styles are dependent on a few things: the variety of rice, where the rice was grown, the water, the climate, the yeast used, and the regional cuisine. Towards the northeast where it was cold and mountainous, you had styles that were dry, clean, crisp to compliment more subtle cuisine. It's warmer and more tropical in the southwest and this led to bigger, sweeter, richer sakes that complimented a cuisine centering around oilier fish and more intense flavors. After World War II, many things in Japan became centralized following US influence. This meant rice production and distribution became a government run operation that essentially eliminated regionality in rice. Breweries couldn’t own their own rice farms and rice that used to be available in just one region, suddenly was available nationwide. Whatever rice was most affordable, available, or worked for a certain style of sake generally won out.

On top of this, taste trends in the 80s and 90s, led to Ginjos and Daiginjos (each grades of sake that reflect the amount each grain of rice is milled before sake brewing takes place) being the dominant styles. Think hazy IPAs in the current US beer landscape. These sake grades are generally considered pretty, delicate, sweet, floral. More milling is required and less focus is on the unique flavor qualities of each rice variety. Not bad by any means, but most toji (head brewer) and brewery presidents were less concerned with making a sake of a region or place, and making a sake that would win competitions and open the wallets of customers. Luckily, over the last two decades things are changing, Government regulations are adapting to modern consumer and producer demands and many breweries are looking to highlight what makes their town or region special. They’re seeking out locally grown rice when they can, or even growing their own, and creating GI (Geographical Indication) for some regions and prefectures.

The sake industry, unfortunately, shut down with the rest of the world at the beginning of the pandemic, and is just now slowly getting back on its feet and attempting to return to normal production levels. On top of this, sake consumption in Japan is on a decades-long downward trend, while consumption overseas is growing every year. Several factors contribute to this, but the sake industry and the Japanese government are trying to reverse this trend domestically. Even going as far as hilariously running a contest and government sponsored ads encouraging drinking!

By volume, the USA is the largest importer of Japanese sake, with China and Hong Kong closely behind. While the folks at JSS hope things change domestically, the excitement about the overseas growth of sake is huge. Fortunately for us here in the States, that means our sake selections will keep expanding. We have to do our part people,

Japan needs us to drink sake!

Nagano:

Masumi in the Mountains