Author Archives: John Gauntner

Kanagawa, just below Tokyo, is not exactly a hotbed of hot brewers. Sure, there is good sake from amongst the prefecture’s comparatively scant 16 kura. But it is not a region most sake fans would gravitate toward when it comes to selecting recently hip sake. Then there is Tensei.

Tensei is made by Kumazawa Shuzo, a great example of what fresh, new, youthful thinking that is decidedly out of the box can do in turning around one company – and by extension – the industry.

Their story is a long-ish one, and best saved for its own limelight. But in order to inch our way back to the topic here, one of the ways Tensei got back on track was to start a club, a simple pre-sale of a tank of sake.

Those of us that have over the past 20 years supported Tensei will pay a modest sum for three bottles of sake. But we pay in advance, and give the toji total freedom to pull out all the stops. He will use the best rice, yeast and methods he can. And it usually goes very well. But since we have supported him by paying in advance, if it falls short, we have supported him with a lesson learned.

Most years it is great. But last year, i.e. the three bottles I got in June of 2012, were decidedly thinner, and the aromas were laced with what is called ethyl caproate, giving it a bit of apple but underpinned by a bitter layer. OK, fine, I thought. If he does not push the envelope once in a while, he will not get better.

And I drank ‘em. All three. They were fine, if not the rockin’ and interesting stuff I have come to expect from Tensei. I usually drink their junmai ginjo, and that has remained steady and unchanged, so no real problem.

And then came this year. I had subconsciously lowered my expectations for the club stuff. And when it arrived, I gave it the fair shot, full professional concentration applied. And, boy, did it rock. I mean, outstanding. “Hodo hodo” is the term in Japanese; just enough, but not too much. Just enough umami, maturity, breadth, aroma… I really found it great.
And as such wasted no time in emailing the toji to let him know as much. I simply expressed how balanced it was, compared to last year. He responded almost immediately.

Last year,” he began, “based on our initial findings, we expected the rice to dissolve quickly and thoroughly.” Each year, sake brewers begin the season with lower grades, partly to feel out the year’s rice. How did weather affect things? Will it dissolve quickly, leading to full flavors, or out-of-control rough ones if not reined in? Or will it resist dissolving, be hard, which could lead to not enough flavor and an overall tight profile unless coaxed into dissolving via higher moisture content and other methods.

“And so,” he continued, “we treated it as such, keeping the moisture in check so as to eliminate any overbearing or sloppy flavors in the final product. However, when we got to our top daiginjo, the rice did not cooperate. Hence the narrow flavor profile.” And this is why sake brewing is so challenging and interesting. One can have reams of data, but if the fickle micro-organisms and other elements do not feel like going along with that data, the result may go off on a tangent. Textbooks alone will simply not cut it.

“This year, he added, “it behaved as we expected, and everything worked like a charm. Hence the great balance, ideal level of fullness and umami, and as-predicted maturity.”
“Be sure,” he concluded, “to save one for at least six month. The real umami and richness will become even more apparent!” And so I will.

I think that rice is not considered to change much from year to year, when it fact, it does vary hugely. And these variations do have an effect on the final product from year to year. However, so much manhandling of the raw materials takes place after harvest that good craftsmen can and do smooth out these differences in favor of the year-to-year consistence that is, in fact, their goal.

Interestingly, most brewers cover these year-to-year changes on the fly. The sake in which they are most evident are sake from impossibly tiny brewers (which the brewery that makes Tensei is not) and one-off sake such as this club sake, or contest sake. It is harder to blend differences into oblivion, or tweak them away when working with little else to use in blending, or sake that changes from year to year.

Rice is awfully hard to second guess. Yes, it varies. And yes, good brewers can work with that variation. But no, it cannot be done based on rules or textbooks, at least not as well as it can be done via experience and intuition.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sake Professional Course in Las Vegas October 28 to 30~~~~~~~~~~

The next Sake Professional Course will take place October 28 to 30 at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada. Finish off an intense sake education by spending Halloween in Vegas!

More about the seminar, its content and day-to-day schedule, can be found here:
http://www.sake-world.com/html/spclv.html

The Sake Professional Course, with Sake Education Council-recognized Certified Sake Professional certification testing, is by far the most intensive, immersing, comprehensive sake educational program in existence. The three-day seminar leaves “no sake stone unturned.”

The tuition for the course is $825. Feel free to contact me directly at sakeguy@gol.com with any questions about the course, or to make a reservation.

Several municipalities and one prefecture have recently put into effect actual legal ordinances  dictating that if you say “kamapai!” it must be with sake (or in one case, shochu, Japan’s indigenous distilled beverage).

The municipalities are: Kyoto (the first to do so!), Hakusan in Ishikawa Prefecture, Minami Aizu in Fukushima Prefecture, Higashi Hiroshima (wherein sits the brewing town of Saijo), the whole of Saga Prefecture, the whole of Kagoshima Prefecture (for shochu, not sake!), and Nishinomiya in Hyogo, where it will be made official on “Sake Day 2013,” October 1.

All are prominent sake-brewing regions. On top of that, two small villages in Hyogo known for growing some of the best Yamada Nishiki in the country have also enacted such ordinances. Other places are expected to follow.

Kyoto, where it all started, explained that the purpose was to spread sake and its culture, and that no fines or  strong-arm enforcement would occur.

It has been all too common over the decades in Japan to start with a beer for the initial “kampai” or call of “cheers,” and then move on to sake. Hopefully, these ordinances will playfully but effectively move people back to toasting with Japan’s gem of gems, sake. (And shochu in Kagoshima!)

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Dallas, Texas, August 8~10, 2013

The next Sake Professional Course will take place August 8-10, in conjunction with TEXSOM 2013 at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas.

The course has checked in full! 満員御礼！However, a couple of cancellations are expected, so if interested, please do send me an email as soon as you can.

More about the seminar, its content and day-to-day schedule, can be found here.

The Sake Professional Course, with Sake Education Council-recognized Certified Sake Professional certification testing, is by far the most intensive, immersing, comprehensive sake educational program in existence. The three-day seminar leaves “no sake stone unturned.”

The tuition for the course is $825. Feel free to contact me directly at sakeguy@gol.com with any questions about the course, or to make a reservation.

Happy New (Brewing) Year! BY25 has begun.

While most sake is best young, sometimes sake is aged by the kura before being released. And sometimes, we can see an indication of the year in which it was brewed. This should make it all simpler – provided we know how to read that information. The problem stems from two points: one, Japan does not use the same dating system as the West, but rather a year-numbering system based on the reign of the current emperor, and two, a given sake brewing season stretches across two calendar years.
First of all, while Japan does relate to the fact that this is 2013, officially and traditionally it is called Heisei 25, or the 25th year of the era of Heisei. A bit of a mathematical hassle, especially when drinking, but not an insurmountable obstacle.

Next, sake brewing starts in the fall of one year and ends in the spring. So, if a sake were labeled only as year 25, we would not know if it was the season of Fall ’24 to Spring ’25, or Fall ’25 to Spring ’26. These are two different years as far as brewing is concerned, and can be likened to two totally different vintages in the wine world. So, we need a bit more detail.

This point did not escape the clever folks at the ministry of taxation, who also needed a more efficient way to tax kura on their output. And so long ago they came up with the concept of the “Brewing Year,” or BY. Just like fiscal years can differ from calendar years, in Japan the Brewing Year runs from July 1 to June 30th of the following year. This, then, encompasses the entire brewing season of every brewer in the country in one clean 12-month period.

So, BY24 (it might also appear 24BY) ran from July 1 2012 until June 30 2013. And sake brewed last fall and into this spring would be considered part of BY24. And, BY24 just ended a few days ago, when we entered into BY25. So, even though calendar year 25 (read: 2013) is half over, we just now started BY25.

Traditional Sakagura (sake brewery)

How does this help you? Well, when you see a sake labeled, for example, BY23, you know that since Heisei 25 is 2013, this sake was brewed in the season beginning in the fall of 2011, and running into the spring of 2012. That would make it about a year and a half to two years old; not at all odd for a sake of maturity and richness in style.

Again, since aged sake is such a small drop in the bucket, you will rarely come across this. But if and when you see such mysterious nomenclature, you will know precisely how old your sake is.

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Sake Professional Course Sake Pro Course NYC 2013

Kikizake-joko – Official Tasting Glasses

Dallas, Texas, August 8~10, 2013

The next Sake Professional Course will take place August 8-10, in conjunction with TEXSOM 2013 at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas

More about the seminar, its content and day-to-day schedule, can be found here.

The Sake Professional Course, with Sake Education Council-recognized Certified Sake Professional certification testing, is by far the most intensive, immersing, comprehensive sake educational program in existence. The three-day seminar leaves “no sake stone unturned.”

The tuition for the course is $825. Feel free to contact me directly at sakeguy@gol.com with any questions about the course, or to make a reservation.

It’s complicated…

Last time, we looked at the idiosyncratic rice distribution system in Japan, and how that affects the 1.4% of all rice that sake rice represents, with the main points being that brewers themselves almost never own the fields, and that the majority of sake rice, by far, is distributed by powerful agricultural cooperatives, a system that has its attendant strengths and weaknesses.

As rice distribution in Japan is deeply rooted in all that Japan is, a comprehensive study would extend beyond the interest and attention span of even the most ardent readers and sake fans. So let us keep close to how it relates to sake in what follows here.

In truth, there is a lack of clarity related to all things rice-distribution in Japan, much of which affects the sake world. For example, while the rice for top grades of sake is fairly easy to order and trace, remember that most sake is not premium, and the rice that goes into that lion’s share of sake on the market – while cheaper than top-grade sake rice – is a driving element in the sake industry. In other word, most of the sake on the market is made of this somewhat lesser, significantly less expensive rice. So when the supply of that is threatened, the effect on the market is huge.

And that is what we have happening right now. There is a system of supplying rice within the current distribution system in which brewers can specify a minimum of information about the rice as a request, but what they get may be different. But it won’t matter, at the level at which they are using it. The system refers to such rice as “kakomai,” but let us call it the “cheap rice system” here, abbreviated CRS.

So, what is purchased through the CRS is somehow subsidized by local prefectural governments. And the rice itself can be a blend of stuff that was left over from higher than expected yields or lower than expected orders, or perhaps some of the less-carefully grown stuff. And all mixed together as well. But it is very inexpensive, comparatively speaking.

But in truth, as mentioned above, it won’t really matters as it will be used for cheaper sake, and it will do fine. Having said this, though, remember that cheaper sake is 65 percent of the market.

Who can grow what, and how much of it, is strictly controlled by the government so as to avoid having excess stock and thereby adversely affecting market stability. However, there are some gaps and loopholes and options open to the farmers. There is no obligation to grow rice that would be used in the CRS system. And over the past couple of years we have seen more farmers move away from rice that could be used for sake brewing and growing vastly inferior rice that can be used for animal feed.

Why? Because government subsidies for fertilizers and insecticides and the like are higher for fields allotted to the animal-feed rice. On top of that, fields on which such animal-feed rice are grown do count toward the allotment of land upon which a farmer is permitted to grow rice. So, they get more subsidies, and can grow as much as they want. No wonder they choose that over rice that could go through the CRS and be used for sake.

Why would animal-feed rice be favored? Because that limits the need to import it, helping to offset trade imbalances, as well as assisting local agricultural. Good reasons to be sure! But the effects on sake could be big. How big? Hm. Once source has said that only 30 percent of the orders can be filled with inexpensive CRS rice, and that the cost of said rice would increase by as much as 25 percent. That will undoubtedly affect the brewing industry in both profitability (to the degree that it actually exists!) and consumer prices too. Apparently the situation is fairly grave.

Note too that not absolutely everyone is affected. A few large and stable breweries have the economies of scale in buying power to negotiate cheap enough prices for high enough volumes where they do not need such rice. So they are immune. And some premium brewers do not mess with that rice either, using only contract-grown rice or top-grade sake rice. But most of the 1350 breweries remaining will be affected.

Also, the impending developments related to the multinational economic agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, may drastically affect things as well by opening up Japan to very cheap rice imports – if, that is, Japan chooses to fully participate. When I asked one brewer about it, he insisted it was a very good thing, and that Japan’s rice system desparately needed to change, and that despite the short term pain in would be good for Japan in the long run. However, became so passionate (read: irate) that I could not longer understand his rant, fading off into a local accent as he did. So the details were lost on me but I got the gist.

Next, remember, brewers have to buy all that rice up front. Which means, every autumn, many have to significantly strain their finances just to start the season, the return on which they will not begin to see for a year at least. Securing and backing the requisite support in a fragile economy for a contracting industry is another big issue.

There are more vagaries that the rice growing cartel, er, communities employ, and often the sake brewers themselves do not fully understand. I remember one brewer from Shiga, near Kyoto, telling me that they were finally able to grow Yamada Nishiki in Shiga. “You mean, you could not grow it here before? But I know I have had Shiga sake made with Shiga-grown Yamada Nishiki,” I asked inquisitively.

“Well,” he stammered, “you can, but you cannot put it on the label – until now.”

“Oh?,” I continued. “Who controls that?” I asked out of sincere interest. Rice growing is controlled by one industry, sake labeling by another. I sensed a disconnect. And so did he.

He thought a second, and said, “Wow. I don’t know. That’s just what the farmers told me. Let me check on that and get back to you!”

Yet another brewer from Yamagata told me that he had been told that one could not put the name of the rice on the label unless the seeds came from an official source, i.e. the cooperative. Huh? Sez who? And enforced by who? Is this the law, I asked?

“It’s, uh, vague,” said my Yamagata brewer friend. “And the frustrating thing is that the folks distributing the rice keep it that way. Those that know keep it vague! I could explore it further, and challenge it, but I have other higher priorities. So we just deal with it,” he acquiesced.

Sake is unique in many ways. For better or for worse, the extremely high cost of the raw material is one of those ways. And the byzantine distribution system – while it serves some purpose indeed – is yet another. Let your understanding of this add to your appreciation of all that goes into the glass of sake before you!

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Dallas, Texas, August 8~10, 2013

The next Sake Professional Course will take place August 8-10, in conjunction with TEXSOM 2013 at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas

More about the seminar, its content and day-to-day schedule, can be found here:
http://www.sake-world.com/html/spc_texsom_2013.html

The Sake Professional Course, with Sake Education Council-recognized Certified Sake Professional certification testing, is by far the most intensive, immersing, comprehensive sake educational program in existence. The three-day seminar leaves “no sake stone unturned.”

The tuition for the course is $825. Feel free to contact me directly at sakeguy@gol.com with any questions about the course, or to make a reservation.

Now, that’s using your head!

Long before the days of thermometers, hydrometers and barometers, brewers relied entirely on their senses to gauge the progress of a fermenting tank of sake. They might not have known the scientific causes, but experience and intuition told them how to interpret what they saw, tasted and smelled.

One of the most reliable of these empirical yardsticks — one that is still used today — is the appearance of foam on the top of the moromi (fermenting mash). Throughout the 18- to 35-day ferment, the foam will change appearance quite regularly — and very clearly reflect what is taking place inside the tank. Over the centuries, names were given to the foam at each stage, making it easy to assess and convey the status of the work in progress.

After the yeast starter has been created, and after water, rice and koji have been added over four days, foam will begin to develop as the yeast cells process the sugars in the tank and give off carbon dioxide. This will rise to the surface, often dragging yeast cells with it. This is why the foam has 2 1/2 times as many yeast cells in it as the liquid beneath.

Two or three days into the ferment, small striations will appear on the surface, similar to taut muscle under skin; hence the term suji-awa (muscle foam). Next, a thick layer of soft foam will begin to cover the entire tank; this is known as mizu-awa (water foam).

The timing of these changes, of course, depends on myriad factors, such as how much the rice has been milled or the tank’s temperature. But soon after this, the ferment will enter its most active stage, and foam will rise in great swaths, so that it looks like huge boulders tumbling over each other. This is known as iwa-awa (rock foam).

This continues into the highest stage of foam, known as taka-awa, when the bubbles themselves become very small and fine. This usually occurs around the 10th day or so, but there is great variation.

The foam rises so high that brewers usually use a simple rig consisting of a piece of wire that gently spins on a motor. Its sole purpose is to beat down the foam gradually, which spares them the need for high-walled tanks. It also aids in sanitation, as one of the greatest sources of sake-spoiling bacteria is foam that has dried on the tank’s interior.

As the fermentation begins to wane, the foam too falls back, leading to the stage known as ochi-awa (falling foam). This segues into a stage with very large, soapy-looking bubbles known as tama-awa (ball foam).

After this foam also fades away, the moromi’s surface is referred to as ji (ground). This stage has many sub-conditions with their own names. Small wrinkles in the surface are referred to as chiri-men (a type of rough cloth). A totally smooth surface is known as bozu, in reference to the shaved head of a priest. If rice solids that did not ferment have risen to the surface, it may look like a lid is on the moromi, and this is referred to as futa (lid).

Much can be told about the quality of the sake at this stage from observing this surface. For example, if the lid is thick, it indicates that a significant amount of wild yeast ended up in the moromi and survived. This is because the rice fibers tend to attach themselves to many types of wild yeast and rise to the surface when pulled by the carbon dioxide molecules, giving that thick-lidded appearance. Brewers know, then, that a thick-lidded moromi in its final stages will often lead to a sake that is rough, acidic and less refined.

Naturally, today these observations are combined with chemical measurements, such as acidity, residual sugar and temperature, to create the precise and wonderful flavor profiles.

Note, there are yeast strains that do not foam up, which has several advantages, including permitting brewers to get higher yields out of their tanks, since they do not have to worry about leaving room for the rising foam. Let us look at these non-foaming yeasts in more depth in the near future.

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Sake Professional Course Sake Pro Course NYC 2013

Kikizake-joko – Official Tasting Glasses

Dallas, Texas, August 8~10, 2013

The next Sake Professional Course will take place August 8-10, in conjunction with TEXSOM 2013 at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas

More about the seminar, its content and day-to-day schedule, can be found here:
http://www.sake-world.com/html/spc_texsom_2013.html

The Sake Professional Course, with Sake Education Council-recognized Certified Sake Professional certification testing, is by far the most intensive, immersing, comprehensive sake educational program in existence. The three-day seminar leaves “no sake stone unturned.”

The tuition for the course is $825. Feel free to contact me directly at sakeguy@gol.com with any questions about the course, or to make a reservation.

It’s complicated…

One of the more idiosyncratic aspects of the sake world is the distribution system via which brewers get their rice. It certainly is not simple, and at one time it probably made sense. Certainly there are many that benefit from it – both brewers and farmers – and others for whom it serves them less. And, of course, there are those that have the means and cleverness to work around it if need be. Let’s look at it a bit more closely.

The place to begin is to realize that sake brewers do not grow their own rice. Fundamentally speaking, since just after World War II, companies, i.e. business entities are not permitted to grow rice. All rice is grown and sold by individual farmers. Business entities are basically not allowed to be involved. Things have changed a little bit recently and there are some exceptions, but basically sake brewers cannot own their own rice fields, or grow their own rice.

Why is this the case? It is to prevent the reconsolidation of farmland. Long ago, owners of huge tracts of land controlled things, rather than the peasants living on it and growing on it. For reasons beyond my comprehension (although my sense of common decency says it’s not cool) this is not a stable situation economically. Regardless of the reasoning, this keeps rice plots spread out and small, with the average being about 1.65 acres, compared to farms typically 160 times that in the US.

Rare shot of rice when flowering (Psst! It’s Yamada Nishiki!)

This lead to the creation of agricultural cooperatives, about which more could be written than the scope of this newsletter can hope to contain. But in short, local farmers have their rice distributed to the market through local agricultural co-ops, from whom they are often obligated to buy fertilizers, insecticides and more. But these co-ops then negotiate prices and secure livelihood for the local farmers and others. They are also necessarily competitive organizations, and do their best to promote the brands of rice that grow best in their region.

And for many brewers, this is the easiest way to go. They order a certain rice grown in a certain region, and almost always, they will get it. They cannot specify just who the grower is, just the variety, inspected grade, and region. And while sometimes shortages do occur, almost always they get what they ordered.

Then, a scant 15 years ago or so, laws changed that allowed brewers to bypass the co-ops and form contracts with farmers to buy rice directly. This is great for a number of reasons. They can “see the faces” of the producers, dictate a bit more about how it is grown if they want to, and see it at every step of its evolution. However, there are downsides as well to going with single producers via contract.

For example, what if there is a bad year, and harvested amounts are low? When one buys from an agricultural co-op that draws from many growers, it is easy to cover those shortages. Sure, somebody somewhere gets stiffed, but it’s a game of supply and demand, and who orders first.

But if they buy from one farmer drawing from just a few fields, a bad year means less rice, which must then be bought later, elsewhere, and may be neither the quality level or price that was initially sought.

And what if there is a bumper crop? While that sounds great, it might not be. Again, buying from a co-op is no problem. “You ordered this much, you get this much. The surplus is our problem.” But if you buy it via contract on a field, if they have bumper crop, you are stuck with paying for and then dealing with all that excess rice that grew on that field. After all, the grower reserved it all for you. And while you might be tempted to think, “Well, just make more sake with it!” it is not that simple practically, economically or even legally.

Of course, there are ways to work around both of the above issues; the point here is simply to show the pros and cons of each, and how big an issue procuring rice is for sake brewers.

Only about 1.4% of all rice grown in Japan is sake rice. Obviously, it is not a cash crop, nor the priority for most farmers, or the co-ops. Wide plains are reserved for more lucrative-to-grow table rice, and often sake rice gets relegated to the harder-to-till parcels. Not always, mind you; but often.

Also, a few years back, it became legal for brewers themselves (actually, some business entities) to grow rice. One would think, “Hey, now this changes everything, duddn’t it!” But in reality, very few have begun to do that. A few have, and surely others welcome the idea in concept. But gearing up to farm when you do not have the people, experience and tools is major hassle, and on top of that, the relationships with those that can do it well are in place. Let it ride.

But in truth there are many patterns. One brewer I know well maintains about 25 fields around his region, small parcels of land that are owned by folks too old to work them anymore. My brewer friend rents them for very little, and it is win-win as he gets to grow his rice his way, and he keeps the land arable too, which the owners like.

“It has its attendant issues,” he lamented hesitatingly. “Often, those old folks can be a pain in the ass.”

Why then, I suggested, do you not just buy the land from them? The terseness of the wave of his hand with which he dismissed that suggestion clearly conveyed its ridiculousness.

“Land prices are high; profit margins on rice and sake are miniscule. It would take me well over a full century to reap a return on my investment!”

So while many brewers might the romantic notion of growing their own sake rice, it is often not a practical option.

As rice distribution really is a murky and vague topic, let us look at it again in next month’s newsletter, when we will see how government allocations of land, and the subsidies related to that, can significantly affect rice supplies. That, and more murky rules. For now, suffice it to say that procuring rice for sake in Japan is significantly different from procuring grapes for wine, anywhere.

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Sake Professional Course Sake Pro Course NYC 2013

Kikizake-joko – Official Tasting Glasses

Dallas, Texas, August 8~10, 2013

The next Sake Professional Course will take place August 8-10, in conjunction with TEXSOM 2013 at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas

More about the seminar, its content and day-to-day schedule, can be found here.

The Sake Professional Course, with Sake Education Council-recognized Certified Sake Professional certification testing, is by far the most intensive, immersing, comprehensive sake educational program in existence. The three-day seminar leaves “no sake stone unturned.”

The tuition for the course is $825. Feel free to contact me directly at sakeguy@gol.com with any questions about the course, or to make a reservation.

What is happening in the brewing world itself…

Changing Sake Flavor Profiles
A survey by the Ministry of Taxation on sake flavor profiles for last year showed a couple of interesting trends.

In short, the trend for junmai-shu to be both drier and richer continued. For better or for worse, more intense junmai has become more popular. Also, in ginjo-shu, the alcohol content and amount of a compound called ethyl caproate (think “apples” in your ginjo) also increased. So brewers are taking the sake of those grades further into their archetypal manifestations. Overall acidity of premium sake stayed pretty much the sake, but the umami-yielding amino acid content dropped a bit. The sweet/dry and richness of non-junmai premium sake (basically ginjo-shu) also stayed the same.

While this may not be so useful in our everyday sake sipping endeavors, it is interesting to hover over and observe the changes and trends.

Special Clause 87 Extended Again
In January, the Ministry of Taxation again extended Special Clause 87 for a couple of years. As you all likely remember, SC87 gives tax breaks to smaller brewers, which means almost everybody, since the industry is so polarized.

How polarized? Out of 1260 breweries, about 15 make about 50% of the sake. About 1000 are very, very small.

Traditional Sakagura (sake brewery)

The original clause gave a 30% break to these smaller brewers, and as it expired, the industry (well, most of it!) sought a permanent extension. The compromise was a 20% break for five more years (actually, it is a bit more complicated than that, but that is the gist). So the can has been kicked down the road a bit, but hopefully, over the next five years, profits will rise, and will not stand to lose the hundreds of brewers we might have lost this time, had it expired.

Yamada Nishiki Shortage
The harvest of Hyogo-Prefecture-grown Yamada Nishiki last year was down for a handful of reasons, and the impact is being felt throughout the industry.

The rice grown is sold to the Brewers Associations of the various prefectures, rather than to individual brewers. And Hyogo Prefecture has told at least a few prefectures that they would only get 88% of what they ordered.

It was indeed a less-than-copious harvest. But there are other reasons and rumors swirling about too. While keeping the homeboys of Hyogo and the most important customers happy before supplying those far away is certainly part of it, there is more. For example, one source told me (on condition of anonymity) that the Tohoku region sold a lot of sake fast after 3/11/11, and needed to outsource some of that from Western Japan, who then needed to replenish their stocks, hence driving demand for Yamada up. Another source said that Hyogo Prefecture tightened their standard for top-inspected-grade “Tokujo” Yamada Nishiki to raise the image of Hyogo-grown Yamada, thus lessening the supply of same. There are other interpretations as well.

In any event, this and the fact that there have been overall price increases on most rice this year means we may see an increase in sake prices come next fall.

I have long known that Nara Prefecture, which borders Osaka and Kyoto in western Japan, has been known as the birthplace of sake. But I got majorly schooled during a recent visit there.

Nara, in fact, holds major significance in Japan’s history, and was even the capital from 710 to 784. During that time, there was a brewing department within the walls of the imperial palace in Nara. Sake back then, however, was a far cry from what we enjoy today (for one, it had much less alcohol), and the “Imperial Brewing Department” (the “IBD”?) focused its efforts for the most part on sake used in ceremonies and events. In fact, the IBD produced upwards of a dozen different types of sake, some colored with ash of black, red or white hues, with varying degrees of alcohol content, mostly for use in ceremonies.

Let us first look at a bit more of the history of sake in Nara. In time, like a few hundred years (things moved much more slowly back then) sake-brewing moved into the many Buddhist temples of the Nara region, as they had brought back their initial brewing technology back from China on their, um, supposedly religious expeditions to that mainland.

At this particular juncture of Japanese history (Heian era into Kamakura era, 9th to 13th centuries, roughly), there was a bit of a lull in political and military power, as it moved from the Fujiwara clan to the dueling Taira and Minamoto (Heike and Genji) clans. So there was a bit of a vacuum, or at least a low pressure zone, for a while. The resident monks of the numerous temples, in order to protect both themselves and their interests, militarized a bit. They trained and mobilized themselves, and undertook economic activities as well, including some sake brewing.

As time passed, they took sides out of necessity, and as power went back and forth, this means they inevitably found themselves on the wrong side of a vengeful, if temporary, victor. Revenge was often mercilessly exacted, and many, many temples were burned down and destroyed. Just about this time is when the brewing moved from what remained of the temples to the nearby Ikeda area, of modern-day Osaka. This is admittedly a bit of an oversimplification, but will do for our purposes here.

The source of my recent schooling was a temple called Shorakuji (http://shoryakuji.jp/ even ancient Buddhist temples are on the internet these days) on a mountain called Boudaisen. As I made my way up the mountain toward the temple, I was surrounded by dozens of terraced plots, the leveled earth supported by short stone embankments averaging five to six hundred years old. A temple once graced each of these plots, but after the vengeful fires of long ago, only Shorakuji remains. These temples, here on Bodasen mountain in Nara, are where the yeast starter known as Bodai-moto was created. More on this below…

If sake existed before this, and flourished after this period, why is it said that Nara is the birthplace of sake? Because so many of the basic methods and building-blocks of sake as we know it today were developed there at that time. Let us look a few of these.

Morohaku
Long ago, the rice used for koji was not milled before growing koji mold on it. These days, if anything, that rice is milled more than the straight rice added (known as kakemai). But it was in Nara back then that sake first came to be made with both koji rice and the straight rice being milled before being used. This was known as morohaku, or “both white.” It has since been the norm.

Dangake
This is a fancy (albeit seldom used any longer) word that means to add the rice, water and koji in stages so as to let the yeast enjoy the best environment for brewing, and letting the alcohol go up to twenty percent or so. And ever since this was developed in Nara, it too is the norm. Today, three stages are used, and the three-stage addition process is known as sandan-shikomi.

Pasteurization
Brewers in Nara were the first (records show in 1568) to heat sake up to about 65C, to remove the evil humours. Louis Pasteur lent his name to this process centuries later, but he gets all the credit; the brewers of ancient Nara get none.

Filtering off the lees
Until Nara, all sake was nigori, or cloudy. Clear sake, or sumizake, was first invented in Nara, as this is where they first passed the fermented mash though a mesh to hold back the dregs and let the clear sake through. Curiously, the nearby region of Itami claims this too; however, there are temple records that show that, before Itami was making sake, the monks of Nara were selling the lees (known as kasu) for making pickles. If they were selling sake kasu, they had to have been filtering it out, or they’d have none to sell. So give this one to Nara too.

Yeast starter (Moto)
The step of making a small starter batch with a very high concentration of yeast is an indispensible part of what sake brewing is today. And this, too, started in Nara with what was known as Bodai-moto, which was the precursor to yamahai and kimoto yeast starters, which were the precursors to today’s methods.

So clearly, the fundamentals of all that sake brewing is today were laid down in Nara long ago, hence the deserving title of “the birthplace of sake.”

Just one more thing: The above-mentioned Bodai-moto was invented at one of the temples on the aforementioned Bodaisen mountain, where only Shorakuji remains. It was made using the water of the river that runs down that mountain, and it seems that water holds some special species of lactic bacteria. ‘Course, there is plenty of that stuff in the air, so it is hard to know if the stuff in the river are really that special.

But in any event, Bodai moto was made by mixing water and raw rice, after which the lactic bacteria would proliferate, giving lactic acid that dosed the water, making it safe for sake yeast. Easier and better methods made this obsolete, but about 20 years ago, ten Nara brewers revived the technique. All ten make a tank or two of Bodai moto sake, the moto (yeast starter) only of which is made at Shorakuji and distributed to the ten brewers. So that makes Shorakuji the only Buddhist temple in the world with a sake-brewing license.

To learn more about the sake of Nara – including what brands are available – check out this old article in the archives of Sake World. Note, it offers different and augmenting information than the above, should Nara interest you sufficiently.

In any event, let us carry our newfound respect for Nara as the birthplace of sake into each cup we drink, tying us back to the history and culture of 600-odd years past.

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The Nihonshu-do: Fuhgedaboudit
…unless you are brewing

Recently, I received correspondence requesting me to gather the nihonshu-do for a handful of sake that I help represent. The company requesting this information sought it, presumably, to allow their sales staff differentiate themselves from their competition, as they are in a country just starting to get into sake,  perhaps to make it seem easier for the customers to select products to carry.

Most readers surely recall that the nihonshu-do, or SMV as it is sometimes called outside of Japan, is a number that is supposed to indicate sweetness or dryness in a sake. It generally runs from -3 to +10, and “higher is dryer.” However, in reality, the number is almost useless except in its extreme manifestations, since a handful of things like acidity, temperature, perception, aromas, water, glassware, and certainly accompanying food all add about 20 percent error each. That last sentence alone could potentially yield 140 percent error in one sip. Hence the “almost useless” wording.

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The 2013 Sake Professional Course in New York will be held May 8 ~ 10, 2013. Learn more and make a reservation here: http://www.sake-world.com/html/spcny.html
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But they wanted the numbers nonetheless. Note, many brewers put this number on the bottle (which is part of the problem, actually, as they entice consumers to pay attention to it), but others do not. So I dutifully contacted all the brewers and asked them for the nihonshu-do of the relevant products. All swiftly complied and sent me the data – save one.

That “one” was dreadfully slow in getting back to me. Not that I was surprised; I more or less had expected that based on past dealings with them. In the sake world, I have learned, the speed of response from a kura is proportional to the length of their history. Backing gingerly away from the brink of that diversion, when his response did come, it was in the form of a refusal to comply. And it came with accentuated with sharp wording.

In short, he tore me a new… well, let’s just say I was instructed as to the nature of my misperceptions (a recurring theme with me).

“John, we do not make that information public. You should know that. It is irrelevant to the nature and quality of a sake, and serves only to confuse folks. And that is not just us; the industry has been moving away from this for years now. You are not helping things by promoting this at this stage…”

Yes, I responded politely, I did realize that, and I always do my best to make it clear the nihonshu-do is not worth much attention, but the customer wanted it, and right or wrong, refusing to cooperate would mean that your sake might not be available there, so that like many things in life, a compromise is at least worth considering.

This thought was scoffed at, and the scathing reprimand continued for another unbearable minute or so. Of course, he was right. And it seems the only way to support that correctness is to convey that to consumers themselves as often as needed.

So here goes: Except in its extreme manifestations, the nihonshu-do is almost meaningless in terms of telling us what a sake will taste like, i.e. sweet or dry. In fact, very seriously, it was never intended for consumers’ use.

The nihonshu-do is the specific gravity, i.e. the density of the stuff compared to that of pure water. And during the brewing process, as that changes, it tells brewers how much sugar has been converted to alcohol. As the density of the fermenting mash decreases, the nihonshu-do  number indicates decreasing sugar (which adds to density) and increasing alcohol (which reduces density). And even that is a borderline-gross simplification. The final number, i.e. the nihonshu-do of a completed sake, is an aimed-for number that is part of the recipe, so to speak. But it is one of a gazillion factors, and not overly indicative of one single aspect of the flavor profile.

So, again, the nihonshu-do was never intended for consideration on the part of consumers. Am I saying to totally ignore it? Nah. Let’s not go that far. I wouldn’t go out of my way to prevent it from entering my sphere of consciousness! But I am saying don’t worry about it. And I am for sure saying don’t make a big deal out of it.

The point here is not to bad-mouth the nihonshu-do, or those that choose to pay attention to it. Rather, the true gist really is to encourage people to trust their own palates and experiences with sake more than anything else. That’s what it’s all about.

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The 2013 Sake Professional Course in New York will be held May 8 ~ 10, 2013. Learn more and make a reservation here: http://www.sake-world.com/html/spcny.html
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While visiting an old, very prestigious brewer, I was looking at their lineup. There was no junmai amongst their ginjo offerings. While they had their share of junmai-shu itself, once you got into their ginjo world, there was only non-junmai ginjo products.

I inquired as to why this might be, since it was clearly not just a coincidence. I actually sorta knew, but wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. And since no reason was being openly offered, I dared to ask.

I promptly got torn a new… well, let’s just say I was instructed as to the nature of my misperceptions.

By the way, Ginjo, in this usage refers to all types of ginjo, i.e. including daiginjo manifestations (basically, ginjo to dai for, so to speak!). And non-junmai here refers to types of sake to which a li’l bit of pure ethyl alcohol (most often distilled from sugar cane) has been added after fermentation, not for economical reasons, but for sound technical reasons. These include, but are not limited to, drawing out more flavors and aromas, and improved shelf life.

Back to their retooling of my perceptions, I was told: “There is no such thing as junmai-ginjo. Not here anyway. Never has been. And those that make it do not really understand what ginjo is all about. Nor do we care what the Ministry of Taxation says on the issue; their priorities are different than ours.” They expounded a bit, but the point was well taken.

And that point is that super premium sake like ginjo and its to-die-for manifestation daiginjo were developed with the addition of alcohol as an integrated and necessary step. The whole “junmai” version came later, and this particular brewer’s point is that the whole hullabaloo about junmai being more pure came later, and is actually not so traditional, as far as the brewing industry itself is concerned. And who’s to argue with them?

Certainly not I.

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The 2013 Sake Professional Course in New York will be held May 8 ~ 10, 2013. Learn more and make a reservation here: http://www.sake-world.com/html/spcny.html
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I am definitely not anti junmai at all. Far from it; very far from it. Nor do I question the

Traditional Sakagura (sake brewery)

validity of junmai ginjo and junmai daiginjo. I’m just sayin’…you know. I’m just sayin’ that non-junmai types – those made with a bit of pure, distilled alcohol added during the process – are not only valid, not only worthy of our support, but as far as ginjo is concerned, one could say that they are even more traditional. Or at least hold some brewers.

I dunno… I guess it seems to me that, in the sake brewing process, yeast makes alcohol. And some brewers, for some sake, will then add alcohol. It does not fortify the product, as just a little bit is added, and more water is added later to bring the alcohol content back down to “normal” levels. And what is added is pure ethyl alcohol. It’s the same stuff that is already in there. They just add a bit to temporarily (remember that!) raise the overall alcohol content for technical reasons. Just because it was made outside of the process and brought in does not make it unsavory. And no matter what some folks insist, no one can really tell the difference, at least not in premium sake (remember that too!).

So, I am, if anything, anti-anti-junmai, and double negatives notwithstanding, that almost means pro-added-alcohol.

Why? Because very often it makes the sake better – better flavor, better aromas, better shelf life, and very often, a better value. What’s to diss?

All I am saying is give non-junmai a chance; especially in the realm of ginjo.

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The 2013 Sake Professional Course in New York will be held May 8 ~ 10, 2013. Learn more and make a reservation here: http://www.sake-world.com/html/spcny.html
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