The answer: Yes.

The sake world is rife with paradox. There are so many aspects of sake that are this way, you are told, but a day later another authority says, no, it is not that way. And while you are still scratching your head to figure it all out, you discover things to support both sides of the story. And then, yet a completely different side appears too. Sure, there are principles and rules, but sometimes the exceptions to them outnumber the conforming instances.

One major enigmatic part of the sake world is rice, or more specifically, the importance of using proper, high quality sake rice rather than just regular sake rice – or even table rice – in making good sake. According to some folks, the choice of rice strain determines everything about a sake. Some brewers insist on using only one variety, or just a few.

Then there are those that say technique and brewing methods are more important than the choice of rice in determining the nature of the completed sake. This concept is backed up by the fact that a dozen brewers can take the same rice, even milled to the same degree, and make a dozen completely different sake. How then could the rice really play that much of a leading role?

Rather than the folly of attempting to answer that – an exercise in futility of there ever was one – let me instead be part of the problem and actually support the paradox by showing an extreme example of each of these facets of the jewel that sake is. While this approach may not be so helpful in ultimately understanding sake, it may help encourage us to stop even trying, and just enjoy it.

So let us first look at this idea: to make the best sake, one needs to start with the best rice available. This would be easier to state if there was such a thing as “the” unequivocally best sake. But there ain’t. So let us lower our expectations just out of the gate and say that to make really good sake you have to start with really good sake rice.

Often but not always this means Yamada Nishiki. It has all the necessary qualifications in that it is easy to work with and easy for brewers to bend to their will. It behaves. Of course, it is not the only game in town, and there are brewers that do not use it at all. But a ridiculously high percentage of breweries use at least some Yamada Nishiki.

So Yamada is good. But there is good Yamada Nishiki, and there is great Yamada Nishiki. There is a ranking system, used predominantly in Hyogo Prefecture where the best Yamada grows. And there are microclimates and even particular rice fields in which the best Yamada Nishiki is harvested, measured by objective and measurable standards.

And make no mistake: when top-grade rice like that is in the hands of a good toji and crew, the resulting sake is something special, something beyond the norm. It is not really a matter of being sweeter, or dryer, or more balanced or more expressive or fuller. It’s much harder to nail down concretely, but the difference seems to be a matter of reverberation or resonance in the overall flavor profile. But it is immediately recognizable as something that is clearly a but above. One great example of this is Isojiman Junmai Daiginjo made with Yamada Nishiki from Tojo in Hyogo, but there are others. And this makes it clear that the best rice can lead to subtle qualities that appeal to almost everyone.

But then there’s the rest of the story…

There are also breweries that can make extremely enjoyable sake using less than stellar rice. Traditional techniques combined with modern measurement and technology help brewers tweak things to the point where they can maximize some things during production and minimize undesirables at the same time.

There is a brewery of which I am fond that is located in western Japan. It is quite popular and well distributed these days, and while the company is growing steadily, they are far from huge. I’ll hold back on naming it as the below might not be public information. The toji there is very regimented, and is not emotionally attached to traditional techniques, or at least not just because “that’s the way it’s always been done.” He uses plenty of machines, and eschews some steps that other toji consider indispensable.

After a recent visit to the kura, I was tasting through the lineup with the toji (master brewer) and the kuramoto (the owner of the company), and we were discussing their labeling as we did so. They do not hide the grade of each of their products, but do not put it on the front label either, relegating it to small characters on the back label. But each product has a unique name, like a sub-brand, that lets consumers associate an impression with it. So selecting and remembering their products are quite easy.

“Too much information, like grades and seimai-buai and all that, is distracting in our opinion. Sake should be judged on how it tastes and smells, and not much else. So we do not hide this information, but we deliberately downplay it,” they explained.

This attitude is slowly taking root, with more and more brewers releasing products with that kind of minimalist labeling. While there are admittedly few such product on the market right now, I expect it to grow to trend-like proportions over the next few years.

“Also, you’ll notice we do not put the name of the rice on the bottle either,” continued the kuramoto. “And that is deliberate too.”

“We brew almost all year-round here. And this product,” he said, hoisting a 1.8 liter bottle of their best-selling junmai ginjo, “is made from Yamada Nishiki. Basically. The thing is, we can’t always procure it for a full 12 months; there are years where there is not enough to go around. So once in a while, we have to use a different rice in a couple of batches.”

“So the truth is, I don’t know what rice is in there. There is an extremely high probability that it is Yamada, but I just don’t know for sure!” He exuded complete confidence in their way of doing things.

While the reasons and reality of that approach could go on forever, one things struck as quite significant. Their products are extremely enjoyable, and also extremely consistent. The toji has it dialed in: he knows just what to do with whatever rice he can get to make the final product taste just like that made with Yamada Nishiki. I am willing to bet he struggles more with the non-Yamada to get it to “behave” than he would like. But at the end of the day, he maintains great quality and stability while using “mostly Yamada, but not always.”

So yeah, great rice is important. Unless it isn’t.

In truth, this conversation could go on forever. It could easily wax philosophical. Some would argue that you need that top-grade rice to make top-grade sake, and even for exorbitant prices there is a market for it. And such sake is outstanding. But is it certainly is not the most fitting tipple for all occasions; no way. Glitter. Glam. Bling. And we all like glitter, glam and bling once in a while, this guy included.

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Warmer temperatures and strong storms are not to be trivialized!

The weather has been warmer the past few decades, and the environment has been much less stable overall. Japan is experiencing this as much as anywhere else, and while its effect on the sake world is not yet huge, everyone is aware of the changes and how they could impact things in the future. Sake production itself and, of course, rice growing are the two main things to consider.

Let’s look at production first. Of course, temperature is hugely important during sake production, as a difference of just a couple degrees during fermentation would lead to a completely different sake, in terms of both flavor and aroma. Basically, ginjo and daiginjo call for lower temperatures so as to stress out the yeast and extract all those fruity essences. Not that this kind of sake is the only game in town. But you know; I’m just sayin’.

But note, the industry pretty much has that covered. In the old days, sake brewing was much more at the mercy of nature. Kura (breweries) are built to be cold in the winter, and cooler than the outside in the summer. Thick earthen walls help that cause to some degree of course.

But today, temperature control is much easier than in the past. Tanks can be concentrated into smaller space than in the past, and those rooms within the kura can be further insulated and cooled with modern climate control equipment, no problem. Individual tanks themselves can be chilled too, with all kind of tools now available such as jackets through which coolant can be run. Jury-rigged versions like garden hoses running chilled water can also be used for more budget-conscious breweries.

So proper, well thought-out industrial design can solve a lot of these problems. On top of that, there are also those breweries (like Taketsuru in Hiroshima) that take the philosophy that it is better to just let nature have her way, and let that be expressed in the year’s sake.

In truth, it’s not really this simple, since temperature control calls for more resources and energy. As time passes, we all need to be increasingly aware of that too as it can be part of the problem. The sake industry is not a large industry, and is just a drop in the bucket of energy consumption. But we still need to be conscious of such things.

Rice growing is another issue altogether. While changes are indeed apparent, thus far they are manageable rather than massive. But even bigger changes are afoot for sure.

For example, even though the climate has changed, the best Yamada Nishiki still comes from the same microclimates – such as Tojo and Yokawa – in Hyogo Prefecture, and the amount of top-quality rice that is harvested each year has not declined.

Surely modern technology in all areas helps this. For example, weather radar lenabled everyone to see the massive typhoon Hagibis that engulfed Japan in early October. This allowed the farmers growing Yamada Nishiki to quickly harvest the rice – albeit a bit earlier than they would normally have done it. An early harvest is much better than a ruined one. More significantly, though, climate change affects things in ways beyond higher temperatures.

There are other adaptations to the changing climate that are happening as well. For example, most good sake rice strains do not like colder temperatures, and so not much good sake rice has been grown in the northern parts of Japan. But as things warm up, the northernmost limit is getting nudged even further north.

Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands, was long known for having not-so-good rice, to put it mildly. One brewer from there told me he found a company advertisement from the 80s that bragged – not stated but bragged – that all of their sake was made with rice grown on the main island of Japan, and not in Hokkaido!

But over the past decade or so, things have changed. There are several very good strains of sake rice being grown in Hokkaido, and the rice-growing industry there is actively marketing it to the rest of the country, and successfully so.

As an interesting anecdote related to this, Saga Prefecture is part of Japan’s southernmost of the four major islands, Kyushu. Plenty of good sake rice is grown there, including the aforementioned and sometimes overly adulated Yamada Nishiki. But one brewer I spoke to from Saga is going out of his way to buy and brew with rice from Hokkaido. Why would he bother with this when there is so much good rice locally available?

Because he has his eye on the future. He feels that in time, good sake rice production may move further north. So he wants to get experience with the rice from that region and learn to make increasingly better sake with it. And, furthermore, he wants to open the channel of distribution and establish a relationship with the rice-producing industry up there, so that when Hokkaido rice gets more attention, he will enjoy the benefits of having developed a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship that will afford him preferential status.

Hopefully, we will all act in concert to slow down climate change and take better care of the planet. But the sake brewing industry is already pondering a handful of Plan B options. Let us see how it unfolds over time.

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The brewing season – the first one of the new Reiwa era in Japan – has just begun. Most places have a tank or two, maybe more, already fermenting away. The fall is also the season for lots of tasting events of all kinds of groups and of various scales.

Indeed, the fall is the traditional season for announcing to the world how well the sake of the previous brewing period has turned out. But there is another tasting season, in April or so, where breweries will show their just-brewed sake, called “shinshu,” with all involved knowing it is a bit too young to completely enjoy. Worded more diplomatically, it is understood that most sake will get even better with a few months’ maturation. Such shinshu is brimming with potential, and can tell us a lot about how things went over the past winter.

Most of these are large tastings comprised of many brewers and a lineup of sake from each. But one in particular that I look forward to and value highly each year is put on by just one small brewer, for a couple of hours, in the dim, less-than-extravagant office of his main Tokyo distributor. The fact that I am extremely fond of this kura’s sake is surely a big part of my excitement.

The sake is called Hitakami, from Miyagi, and in short, what Hirai-san the owner does is to line up 30 or so sake, mostly pasteurized but some nama (unpasteurized), all genshu (undiluted, so perhaps a couple of percent higher in alcohol), and all very young. But what is unique here is the chance for those of us in the industry to taste each tank brewed with all its sparkling individuality. No homogenizing blending, not at that stage anyway. No chance for the sake to mellow out. And nothing to equal the playing field amongst them.

Bottles are lined up on a long, narrow table approachable on both sides, and flanked with spittoons strategically placed every meter or so. Each sake is labeled with the batch number of from whence it came. The handout received upon entering gives us the necessary information: “Batch #37, Junmai-shu, Hitomebore rice at 60%, Miyagi Yeast, Nama Genshu, Nihonshudo 5, Acidity, 1.5.” And so on down the line. Furthermore, we were given the date on which the sake was pressed, i.e. the day fermentation ended.

So each bottle at that tasting comes from a separate tank; none were blended. And this makes it extremely educational and interesting, as we can see how different tanks of sake brewed with the exact same ingredients and methods can be very, very different. And a tasting like this is the only time we can experience that. Why?

Because almost without exception, within a given brewery, each season all the sake of a particular grade that is destined to be sold as the same product will be blended together to ensure consistency. But they do not, for example, blend tank #33 and tank #54 since that combo would lead to something great, as they might do with some other alcoholic beverages. The intention is different.

Are there exceptions to this? Of course there are. There are exceptions to everything in the sake world. For example, there are some brewers that deliberately do not blend their products so as to let the uniqueness of each tank do the talking – the sake called Mana 1751 is one such example. And one large and historically very significant company, Kenbishi, does in fact identify three or more tanks in each year’s batch that will morph into something very special when blended. But most of the time, for almost all brewers, blending is done to promote uniformity across all the tanks destined to be sold as one particular product.

Consistency is an important expression of quality in the sake industry, both from bottle to bottle and from year to year. Ensuring that to the degree that it is possible is the objective of blending in the sake world.

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An important period in the history of sake

When looking at the history of sake, both culturally and from the point of technical developments, there is a period in the “dark ages” during which sake brewing was done mainly in shrines and temples in Japan. Interestingly, this was a period of huge strides in brewing methods and technology. But unfortunately, this period of sake history tends to get conveyed in a very abbreviated and minimalist form. It usually takes a back seat to issues such as knowing the grades and types, or how sake is brewed.

While admittedly conversations about how to know just what it is you are drinking, or how to discover your preferences, are more relevant today than the stories of the days of olde, sake’s foray into and back out of the religious ranks is an interesting one.

To follow and understand it all, however, one first needs a perfunctory knowledge of Japan’s history. Until the 8th Century or so Japan was ruled fairly well by an extended imperial court, replete with the emperor and other royals. During this time, most sake was brewed by this court (they had their own brewery on the premises of the palace in Nara) for their own consumption, although much of this was also made for festivals and ceremonies rather than frivolity.

But slowly, aristocratic warrior classes took over the de-facto ruling of the country, although the imperial court continued to rule in name only. Seeing the inherent opportunity, the military government allowed production to extend into the private sector, with sake taxes first being applied in A.D. 878. They continue today.

But sake also – not surprisingly – has religious applications as well, at least in the indigenous religion of Japan, Shinto. (Shinto is characterized by the veneration of spirits in nature and nature’s manifestations, as well as ancestors, and is refreshingly free of anything remotely resembling a formal dogma.) There is a Shinto ceremony called O-miki performed with a Shinto priest in a shrine, and using unique white porcelain flasks (called miki-dokkuri) and cups that can be seen on the altars of shrines everywhere. In this ceremony, a small amount of sake is drunk in a prayerful act of symbolic unification with the gods.

So, even the military ruling elite gave the gods a tax break, and tax-free sake began to proliferate in Shinto shrines, ostensibly for religious purposes only. But Buddhism was also gaining ground in Japan, and as a result of some unique blend of vagueness and tolerance, very often Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples lovingly shared the same grounds. While the two religions have very different tenets, they coexisted very peacefully. “Hey, it’s all good, man” is what the clergy of old likely muttered about. This continued until the Meiji era, when Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples were forcibly separated by decree of the new Meiji government.

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And so, while alcohol is not a part of Buddhist worship, since they shared ground, they shared sake, and they shared the brewing workload. And while, officially, no partaking of the libation was permitted outside of the religious ceremonies, no doubt they were nipping at the product here and there. In fact, they even had a nickname for it to obfuscate the truth from outsiders. Sake drunk by the clergy in temples was known as “Hanyatou,” which (very) loosely translates into “the warm water of wisdom and truth.” How true; how true.

So, for a few hundred years – beginning in the 10th or 11th century and continuing to some degree into the 15th – much sake brewing was centered in temples and shrines. During this time, the monks of the temples in Nara would occasionally travel to China for Buddhist instruction, and a lot of the brewing technology of that time originated from what those monks picked up while in China, and later modified to suit local tastes and objectives.

And so it was here that brewing methods were developed that led to much better sake, a definition that includes (as well it should) significantly higher alcohol levels. Most significantly, it was about this time when the rice, koji and water were added to the fermenting mash in two separate doses to help keep the yeast population at levels high enough to defeat bacterial intruders through sheer numbers. (This later evolved into three additions, as it remains today.) A form of yeast starter known as “Bodai-moto” was also developed by these clever clerics, and this is considered to be the roots of the kimoto yeast starter method, widely recognized as the original yeast starter method of modern sake brewing. Other significant technical developments from the Nara Buddhist temples include pasteurization and milling both the koji rice and the regular rice.

But in 1420, the military rulers made it officially illegal for Buddhist monks to drink, or for sake to be brought into Shinto shrines. While it is unclear how this was enforced, sake brewing began to move more actively into the then-equivalent of the private sector.

Still, these medieval entrepreneurs took the clerically developed technical advances and ran with them, slowly but surely improving both quality and economies of scale. Soon enough, places like Itami and then Nada (both in nearby Hyogo prefecture) rose as very prominent regions of sake production. But they had to attribute much of their success to the monks and priests of the temples and shrines.

Today, there are about ten Shinto shrines that still make a form of sake for religious purposes. But it is hardly the kind of sake we consumers normally enjoy. It is more like a wildly fizzy rice-dosed very thick nigori-zake (cloudy sake). Kind of like nigori on steroids.

Although all of this is a far cry from most ohttps://sake-world.com/sin/f the ginjo and other premium sake we all enjoy today, in a sense we owe a debt and at least an acknowledging thought of gratitude to the Buddhist and Shinto priests of old.

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Finally things are beginning to cool down as we move through nature’s most endearing season. Along with the rapidly turning leaves, cooler breezes, and better food, autumn is the traditional time when sake brewed the previous season goes on sale. Two types of sake you may come across in your autumnal perusing are aki-agari and hiya-oroshi.

Although sake is not usually aged for long, it is in general a bit too young to drink when the brewing season wraps up in the spring. Both the flavors and the fragrances are brash and sharp-edged, and a bit of time sitting quietly helps round out and deepen the sake.

Traditionally this was just about six months, and so the fall became the time when properly aged sake was released. Naturally, brewers often had to release some sake earlier to satisfy demand. But the connoisseurs knew that properly matured sake was well worth the wait. Sake released in the fall after the maturing over the summer came to be known as aki-agari.

The only problem is that the term does not apply too well to modern times.

Fall still remains the traditional time for releasing sake, and this is the season with industry tastings galore. But in actuality maturation periods are far from uniform. Along with the advent of refrigeration came massive flexibility in terms of maturing sake.

These days, some brewers still only mature their sake six months or so, but others do so for a year or longer, and many at very low temperatures, to get precisely the profile they are looking for. Temperature affects the speed of changes during maturation, as does the choice of aging vessel (bottles or tanks). This allows brewers to tweak their flavor profiles, and maintain consistency throughout the year. But everyone does it a bit differently, and it makes the term aki-agari a tad less universally applicable.

Today, aki-agari refers in a broad sense to sake from the most recent brewing season that is released in the fall. You may see it at sake shops and department stores all across Japan.

Then, there is hiya-oroshi. The word hiya-oroshi has its origins back in the Edo period. Back then, finished sake was stored in the large sugi (cryptomeria wood) tanks used for brewing. Normally, this sake had been pasteurized once (by heating it for a short time) before being put in these tanks for maturation. If they needed to ship some out, they would have to pasteurize the sake a second time before putting it into small cedar casks – called taru – for delivery.

This is because the outdoor temperature was still high in the summer, which would allow the sake to become warm enough where dormant enzymes could become activated, potentially sending the sake awry. A second pasteurization permanently deactivates these enzymes, removing that fear, but taking a bit of the zing of the sake along with it.

However, once it became cool enough in autumn, brewers could fill their taru from the storage tank without pasteurizing the sake, and ship it with no fear of it going bad. The lower temperatures of autumn ensured enzymes would not be activated. Such sake – sold in the fall without pasteurizing a second time before shipping – came to be known as hiya-oroshi.

Hiya-oroshi often has a bit more of a fresh, lively taste to it than other sake. While not as brash as freshly pressed sake, there can be a slightly youthful edge to it. Naturally, this varies greatly from sake to sake, and from kura to kura.

And, interestingly, some prefectures in Japan, most notably Nagano and Saga (although there are others) have set an official day for releasing hiya-oroshi, September 9. Naturally, this is not law, but just something the brewers have mutually agreed upon to add a bit of specialness to the event and the sake that it highlights.

Note that hiya-oroshi is technically the same thing as nama-tzume, i.e. the second of normally-two pasteurizations is foregone. But nama-tzume is a purely technical term whereas hiya-oroshi has a seasonal implication, i.e. it is only released in the fall.

The problem is, though, that the term hiya-oroshi is not a legal definition and is therefore open to variation from brewer to brewer. In other words, it’s the usual fun-and-games of the sake world: a term on a label means a particular thing – unless it doesn’t.

And, also typical of the sake world, the industry maintains the spirit of it all. What is important is respected and adhered to, even if the details vary a bit. So almost always, hiya-oroshi will be slightly young and vibrant. That much is consistent from brewer to brewer.

And to make things interesting, some brewers consider hiya-oroshi as just one kind of aki-agari. In truth, that is actually valid thanks to the vagueness of the definition of aki-agari, even if it is a tad confusing. So have fun with that.

What all this means is that now – right now – is the best time to try hiya-oroshi, and notes its slightly youthful touch, and the attendant appeal. While mostly a local, fresh product that is widely available in Japan for a short period of time, some of it does get out to other places in the world as well. Look for it at a reputable sake shop near you.

Way back in April of this year I was in London as a judge for the International Wine Challenge’s Sake Competition. On the morning of the third straight day of tasting sake, it was down to a few sake and a few judges. We were assessing whether or not the sake that had made the cut thus far were worthy of a gold, silver or bronze medal, or whether they were to be relegated back to the quagmire of mediocrity.

Our tasting panel of four included Mr. Satoshi Kimijima, a prominent and passionate retailer and more from Yokohama. He is outspoken to say the least, but he has the experience, knowledge, and tasting prowess to back that up. He tastes pretty much constantly and travels around Japan doing so more than anyone I know. And he plays in a rock and roll band when not tasting. In fact, sometimes I worry about him; but I digress.

The four of us were assessing a sake, and we did not come to an immediate agreement. At least one was concerned that it was too light, with not enough presence or umami, to justify a shiny medal.

Kimijima-san, who was for giving the medal, shook his head tersely and said, “douse wase da kara.” The best translation of this would be, “It is, after all, an early-harvest rice.”

He did not go any further. And as soon as he said that, it all became clear to me. Of course! It should get that medal.

At this point, he deemed it necessary to clarify the reference. So he continued. “Because this sake was obviously made with an early-harvest rice, not a late-harvest rice, we should not expect much more out of it. This is about as rich or deep a profile as we can expect, and because it was a deliberate choice on the part of the brewer, we should acknowledge that and give it a medal.”

First of all, bear in mind this was a blind tasting. None of us knew what the sake before us was. Yet this guy was able to blindly taste the sake and tell us just when the bloody rice was harvested? Can he really do that?

Yes. He can. Like I said, he has tons of experience. How could he know? Well, he couldn’t have, not for sure anyway. But by tasting it and noting the lightness, subdued umami, resonance and depth, he intuitively knew. It could have been a chapter in the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell.

Showering heaps of adulation on Kimijima-san is not really the point here. Rice varieties and their effect on sake is the point.

There are literally hundreds of varieties of rice used in sake brewing. Some are proper sake rice, others are not. Each one is ready for harvest at a different time. Some are harvested as early as August, others not until November. While it is not a clear delineation, early harvest varieties are referred to as wase (pronounced wa-seh) and late harvest types are called okute (oku-teh). This nomenclature applies to both sake rice and table rice, by the way.

Most, but not all, sake rice tends to be okute; this includes Yamada Nishiki, Omachi and a few more well-known types. Gohyakumangoku is a typical example of a sake rice that is wase. And there are of course many rice varieties that are neither early nor late harvest, but rather somewhere in the middle.

More relevantly, early harvest rice tends to lead to lighter flavors, and late-harvest rice yields sake with much more umami, breadth, flavor, and resonance. This is not to say that okute rice types are always and unequivocally better than wase types. Perish the thought! Nothing is ever that simple in the sake world.

Rice is a challenging topic. It is the main ingredient of sake, but the connection between rice and sake flavors is not nearly as tight as that between grapes and wine. Still, great rice leads to great sake. Some say the better the rice, the more the toji (brewmaster) can get it to behave during the brewing process and create the aimed-for flavor profile. While different varieties of rice, including wase and okute amongst those, can lead to identifiable flavor profiles and styles, a dozen different brewers can take the same rice, milled to the same degree, and make a dozen completely different styles of sake. Go figure.

But there are generalizations with which we can work. Yamada Nishiki (which is okute) tends to lead to billowing, broad, resonant, umami laden sake. Omachi (which is also okute) tends to give rise to higher sweetness and acidity, and a decidedly herbal touch. Gohyakumangoku (which is wase) often yields light, airy, delicate flavor profiles. Remember that one is not better than the other. It is simply a choice on the part of the brewer. And we are free to have our preferences, but any sake can be more enjoyable if we taste it knowing it was the result of a chain of conscious decisions by the brewer.

The name of the sake rice used in a given brew is often written on the bottle, but not always. However, no sake label includes information regarding wase or okute. So it may take a while to learn to discern them, but the learning curve is a fun one.

How old is the current sake industry? How long have most of the currently active sake breweries been around? Not surprisingly, there are several ways to look at it. But let’s try to get a concise view of the industry as it is today, bearing in mind that it is in a constant state of flux and change.

There are currently about 1200 sakagura, or sake breweries, active in Japan. About. It really depends on how you count them, and who is doing the counting. There are about 1200 that are active; however, amongst those, there are perhaps a couple hundred that just buy product brewed elsewhere and sell it as their own. (This way of doing things call for an article of its own, so we’ll save the explanation for that.)

Also, there are a couple hundred or so that have licenses but are inactive. And, there are a couple of bottling companies that legally must have a license too, but do not brew. So including them would bolster the number as well. And there are companies with multiple licenses, and some companies that brew but not every single year, and a handful of other statistic sticklers on top of that.

But to simplify things, there are about 1200 active sakagura in Japan now. How long have most of them been around?

Before answering that, we need to point out that the statistics are grouped by era in Japan. Sure, we could transcribe all those to western years, but that’s no fun. So firstly let us look at era names in Japan.

Basically, eras are named after the emperor that reigned in the respective time frame. But sometimes, chunks of time are named for political eras. For example, the Edo era ran from 1604 to 1868, and was named after the capital city, Edo, which later was renamed Tokyo. This span of 264 years was one of relative stability as it was governed by the Tokugawa Shogunate, a long string of shogun that basically handed power down from father to son.

Within that 264 years there were several emperors, and the eras within the Edo era are also known by their imperial names as well. But the main point here is that the Edo era is something that is commonly referred to in Japan, but before and in particular after that eras are named for the emperor that reigned then.

So let us look at how many sake breweries that are still active today were founded in each of these eras.

Pre-Edo (before proper records were kept): 14
Edo era (1604-1868): 399
Meiji era (1868-1912): 431
Taisho era (1912-1926): 119
Showa era (1926-1989): 266
Heisei era (1989- April 30, 2019): 25
Reiwa era, the current era, which began May 1: 0

This means there are 431 companies founded between 1868 and 1912 that are still making sake, and 399 that were founded sometime between 1604 and 1868 that are still active as well. That’s some serious longevity.

There are reasons behind some of the above statistics. For example, in the Meiji era, tax from sake was the largest source of the government’s revenue, since personal income tax did not yet exist. And Japan was involved in a couple of wars back then, with Russia and China. So the government actually went to companies that made shoyu (soy sauce) – since they already had big tanks and lots of space – and directly requested that they begin to brew sake as well. This is one reason for the large number of breweries founded in that era.

In fact, although the short listing above does not show it, there are 903 active sakagura in Japan that are over a hundred years old. That means that 72 percent of the industry is a century old or more.

Back in 1988 there were about 2500 breweries, and before the war they numbered over 5000 spread across Japan. Clearly, many more have closed down over the years than have remained active. It is not possible to know how old each of them were when they closed down, of course, but chances are they some of the older breweries of their time.

The industry loses a couple of breweries each year. That rate of attrition seems to be slowing, i.e. we lost many more each year in the decades of the second half of the 20th century. But things are still contracting.

Yet looked at another way, the sake industry is one of remarkable durability and endurance. Let’s do our best to help that continue on for a few centuries more.

Koji is perhaps the most enigmatic component of the sake world. The absolute coarsest definition of koji is “moldy rice,” although that does not come close to doing it justice. “Steamed rice onto which the mold aspergillus oryzae has been painstakingly propagated over two days” is a much more eloquently crafted albeit wordy description. But no matter how you define it, without koji there would be no sake.

We are reminded of its importance all the time. “Ichi-koji, ni-moto, san-tsukuri.” First in importance is the koji, second is the yeast starter, and third is the fermenting mash. Indeed, nothing exerts more leverage on how a given batch of sake will turn out than the koji. The way a brewer makes the koji will determine if the sake is sweet, dry, rich or light.

How does it do that? Basically by providing enzymes that convert starch to sugar, allowing the yeast to ferment it, and also by contributing a whole host of other things like amino acids and more that combine and interact to become the backbone of the flavor profile of a given sake. But the process is fraught with peril as well: make the koji less than perfectly and the resulting sake could be thin, stinky in any one of oh-so-many ways, or cloying.

Actually, at least scientifically, sake can be made without koji. Straight enzymes can be used, and rice can be liquified. But there are some legal requirements in place that specify that at least some koji must be used. But legal stipulations notwithstanding, the koji drives everything about how a sake is made, and how it will taste and smell. More attention to detail goes into the koji than any other step of the process.

There is a semi-retired sake consultant I run into all the time at tastings, let’s just call him Dr. T., who used to be a government assessor. Tasting sake was basically what he did – as a career. Folks like that can taste a sake and tell a brewer just what they can do in the process to make it better, and this guy was one of the best.

But lately he seems perpetually disappointed in almost everything he tastes. Surly, almost. When I run into him at tastings, we will great each other cheerfully, after which he launches into a rant something along the lines of “No one here knows how to make koji properly…”

One of the breweries under his care when he was active was Kusumi Shuzo in Niigata, who make the sake Kiyoizumi (among other brands). It’s a sake from Niigata that I do not get to taste often enough. The company is famous in the industry as the brewery that revived the rice Kame-no-o, or at least the first widely-used manifestation of it. (It’s complicated both botanically and legally; but I digress.)

Their sake is perhaps just a bit richer than most sake from Niigata, and Kusumi-san, the owner / president ascribes that to the importance they place on the koji. He insists that they do it he old way, “properly,” and that is what makes their sake what it is. The last time I spoke to him at a yearly distributor’s tasting, he spoke of “ listening to the koji.”

“You have to listen to the koji,” he began. “If you listen to the market, to consumers or to other stuff too much, they’ll tell you what they like and that can take a brewer away from the basics.” He made it seem a bit like populism in sake brewing.

“So, we don’t do that anymore. Instead, we listen to the koji.” What he meant, of course, was that regardless of what other brewers might be doing to please the aroma-loving public, they stuck to their traditional basics, centered as they were around making proper koji. By doing so, he continued, they would stay true to their style and would be able to continue to make the great sake they have always made.

He continued, with conviction and pride, “When people that really understand sake go to the store to buy our sake, they actually go out of their way to look at the date on the bottle and buy the oldest bottle on the shelf.” I dunno; a bit of hyperbole methinks. But his point is not lost on me; in fact, it is well taken.

“Because we listen to the koji as we make the sake, we know it will not only stand the test of time in the bottle, but actually be better because of it. We can’t be leaving it up to the yeast, you know. It’s the koji.”

That last little bomb about “not leaving it up to the yeast” was significant. He was subtly referring to how many modern popular sake are made using yeasts that yield prominent aromatics. While that is of course fine, sake like that does not age well; the compounds that lead to apple and tropical fruit nuances do not age gracefully. Often they become bitter and harsh. Age can do that.

But he was delicately and deftly stating how they do not just jump on the bandwagon of recently popular sake, and restating his commitment to their own way of brewing. “It’s the koji.”

Actually, making great sake is more than the koji. It’s, well, everything. Water, rice, technique, ad infinitum. But koji tops the list of priorities for minute attention to detail for a reason. And while it may be enigmatic to we mortals, that’s fine as long as the brewers understand it.

Again: More Milling is NOT unequivocally better!

In last month’s issue of this newsletter, we pointed out how the rice milling wars are essentially over. In other words, the race to have the most highly milled rice has been won, with one brewer in Miyagi (brewers of Atagonomatsu sake) making a sake with a 0 percent milling rate. This is possible since the number representing the seimai-buai (a number which indicates what remains after milling) is rounded down, so that 0.9 percent can be expressed as 0 percent. This piece of technical one-upmanship took them beyond a kura in Yamagata (brewers of Tatenokawa sake) and their one percent seimai-buai sake.

So that has been done. But more significantly, based on the “more milling is better” concept – which has its merits to a certain degree – the drive to make, seek and drink only sake made with highly milled rice has pretty much hit its limit.

In other words, even though milling to 50 percent is enough for a sake to qualify for the technically highest grades of daiginjo and junmai daiginjo, in pursuit of quality – and perhaps a bit of healthy competition – brewers began to push that limit and we have seen sake made with rice milled to 35, 23, 18, 8, 7, as well as the aforementioned one and zero percent sake. Obviously, that is as far as it will go.

However, in all truth, many people pay far too much attention to the seimai-buai number. Yes, it does determine much about the way a

Sake rice: note the opaque center where the starch is concentrated.

sake will taste and smell. And yes, the various grades of sake are defined most significantly by the seimai-buai. So it is of course important. But while the seimai-buai does in fact define much about the final nature and quality of a sake, it is not entirely accurate to say that one milling rate is unequivocally better than another. Not by any stretch of the imagination, does it.

This tendency to place over importance on that number is certainly a bigger issue in Japan than it is overseas – much to the dismay of sake brewers. This is because distributors and restaurants often determine the maximum they are willing to pay based largely on the seimai-buai. They often do not take into account the basic flavor and aromatic profiles, their quality or appeal, or the myriad of other factors above and beyond the milling that went into make a sake as good as it is. But that rabbit-hole discussion is for another day.

So more milling is not necessarily better. And there are a handful of angles from which this can be assessed.

For example, there are various milling techniques that affect the significance of the final seimai-buai number. One is called “flat milling,” or henpei seimai. When this method is used, rice is milled down in such a way that it maintains its original shape, that of a squashed rugby ball, rather than becoming round. Since the starch packet in the center (called the “shimpaku”) has that same almost-oblong shape, henpei seimai milling removes more fat from the sides of the rice, where fat and protein are more accumulated, and less from the ends.

What this really means for us is that for a given seimai-buai number, if the milling was done by henpei seimai, the resulting rice will have a lower fat/protein to starch ratio, i.e. henpei seimai removes a larger proportion of fat and protein than regular milling. So milling to 50 percent using the henpei seimai method might be equivalent to a 40 done by a normal machine.

So why doesn’t everyone use henpei seimai? Because it’s a pain-in-the-butt, that’s why. There are other variations too that accomplish the same goal, that of making rice more suitable for brewing with less actual milling.

Yet another reason more milling is not necessarily advantageous is that once you’ve milled away all that fat and protein, your just diggin’ into the starch packet. Sure, there will always be a bit of fat and protein remaining but with more and more milling one can come closer and closer to eliminating it entirely. But at a certain point it loses touch with brewing reality and ceases to make a difference in the final product.

Of course, to be sure, more milling does in fact lead to lighter and more refined flavor profiles. And if light and refined sake is your preference, then you’re golden. More milling is your thing.

But in truth, elegant-and-refined is only one figure of merit in sake. Only one. There are so many more to which to pay attention. For example: Breadth. Depth. Reverb. Resonance. Umami. Richness. Weight. Intensity. These are all wonderful aspects of great sake, and often more milling means less of these. If you like sake with these particular qualities, you will find them more often in sake made with less highly milled rice.

Also, beyond the question of milling, there are a multitude of things to consider in a given sake. For example, what rice was used? What

Precision Soaking

grade of that rice and from what region? What year was it brewed, how was it stored, what about pasteurization or the lack thereof? What methods of brewing were used? And of course there are so many more. To only base preferences and decisions on the seimai-buai number is to basically ignore so much pertinent information.

Note, though that this is not to diss daiginjo or sake made with very highly milled rice. That is not my intention at all! Such sake are perfectly valid and invariably well made. It is instead a call to not get wowed solely by the bling of a low number.

We hear this all the time: If you like it, it’s a good sake. And for most of us, what we like will change with time as preferences evolve, and so therefore our definition of what make a good sake will change with time as well. You may find yourself moving away from light, fruity ginjo and toward sturdier, tarter sake. Or you may end up hanging out with daiginjo forever. As long as you find it tasty and enjoyable, you are drinking the best available.

So drink what you like. Do not be afraid of low milling rates like a seimai-buai of 60, 70 or even 80 or more from some producers. Nor should one shy away from the ones and zeroes – if you can find them and if they fit into your budget. It’s all good sake if you like the associated style. Just don’t get blinded by the light.

Sake Professional Course, September 25-27, in San Francisco

Currently, only 15 seats remain available. Reserve yours today!

From Wednesday, September 25 to Friday, September 27, 2019, I will hold the 33rd stateside running of the Sake Professional Course in San Francisco. The content of this intensive sake course will be identical to that of the Sake Professional Course held each January in Japan, with the exception of visiting sake breweries. The course is recognized by the Sake Education Council, and those that complete it will be qualified to take the exam for Certified Sake Specialist, which will be offered on the evening of the last day of the course.

The course will be followed the next day by the True Sake “Sake Day” event, for which SPC attendees will receive a discount. Learn more here: Sake Professional Course in San Francisco

The Last of the Heisei Era

The last Zenkoku Shinshu Kampyoukai (Officially, the Japan Sake Awards, but more descriptively, the National New Sake Competition) of the Heisei Era was held last month, and the results were recently announced.

Lamentably, the awareness of this historically, culturally and technically significant event on the part of the consuming public, the average Taro on the street, is dismally low. Like, next to nothing. That really is a shame as it is such a cool, important event within the industry.

I have written about this contest each year for perhaps 20 years, often at length with peripheral topics like rule changes, politics, and the actual mechanics of the tasting. All of those can be found in the newsletter archives, which are necessarily split up across several locations, the list of which has been collated and presented at the end of this newsletter. If you are interested in more detail on the event, by all means please check that out here.

This year was the 107th running of the contest, which has run each year but two over the last 109 years. Each brewery is permitted only one submission per brewing license. (So those breweries with more than one brewing facility can submit one per brewery.) Of approximately 1200 active sake breweries in the country, 857 submitted a sake.

Almost always it is a daiginjo, although junmai daiginjo are becoming more common. Almost always it has been brewed especially for this contest, i.e. not a sake on the market. And almost always it is fairly intense in flavors, aromas, with exquisite balance. Think “daiginjo on steroids.”

Of those 857 entries, 416 received an award, and of those 237 were gold medals (the remaining 179 being the equivalent of silver, although different nomenclature is used).

There were several notable accomplishments this year. Takashimizu (they have several facilities, but their Goshono Brewery is the one of which I write here) of Akita and Koganezawa of Miyagi upped there industry-leading record to 16 consecutive gold medals in a row. Considering that there are breweries that have never won a single gold medal at all over their entire history, and that winning consecutively is a fairly big accomplishment, that many in a row is quite amazing. Furthermore, the brewery making Urakasumi sake in Miyagi extended their industry leading total to 38, although not consecutively of course.

And, of even further significance, Fukushima Prefecture won more gold medals than any other prefecture for an unprecedented seventh year in a row! In truth, this needs to be conveyed together with the fact that there a lot of producers in Fukushima, third in number behind Niigata and Nagano. So that helps.

For example, Akita prefecture has about half the number of kura that Fukushima has, and scored enough golds to have the highest ratio of golds to submissions. That, too, is really significant; perhaps even more so. I’m just sayin’.

But still, they have this contest dialed in up there in Fukushima, and the quality of their contest sake drips down (no pun intended!) to raise the overall level of their sake on the market.

Fukushima sake has the utmost respect of the industry overall, and let’s hope this spreads even more to the sake-loving contingent all across Japan.

Congratulations to all award winners! The organization behind the competition, the National Research Institute of Brewing, publishes the results in both Japanese and, in recent years, English. You can see the results here, in Japanese. And a scant few days ago the NRIB also published the results from there English-language website and those results are here.

Sake Professional Course, September 25-27, in San Francisco

From Wednesday, September 25 to Friday, September 27, 2019, I will hold the 33rd stateside running of the Sake Professional Course in San Francisco. The content of this intensive sake course will be identical to that of the Sake Professional Course held each January in Japan, with the exception of visiting sake breweries. The course is recognized by the Sake Education Council, and those that complete it will be qualified to take the exam for Certified Sake Specialist, which will be offered on the evening of the last day of the course.

The course will be followed the next day by the True Sake “Sake Day” event, for which SPC attendees will receive a discount. Learn more here: Sake Professional Course in San Francisco