are necessarily of inferior quality. In fact, there has been a recent trend towards favoring the robust tastes often associated with relatively unpolished junmaishu.
Ginjō or Ginjōshu 吟醸 or 吟醸酒 Sake made of very finely milled or polished rice. Polishing reduces the rice to 60 percent of its unpolished weight. A lot of ginjō is junmaiginjō (純米吟醸) made of pure rice, but some ginjō have a small amount of added alcohol, like honjōzō. They are not usually labeled as honjōzōginjō. You have to look at the ingredient list to see if alcohol has been added.
Daiginjō or Daiginjōshu 大吟醸 or 大吟醸酒 Ginjō’s more polished sibling. The seimaibuai (精米歩合), the weight of the polished rice as a percentage of its original weight, is less than 50 percent and in some extreme cases can go as low as 10 percent. Small amounts of alcohol are sometimes added.
The promise of free doburoku sake at the Shirakawa festival draws hundreds of visitors to the remote mountain village.
Other numbers on labels
We have already dealt with one of the important numbers often listed on sake labels, the seimaibuai (精米歩合) or degree of rice polishing. There are three more figures that you will often find on labels, which may help you understand better what you are buying. One is the Nihonshudo (日本酒度, sometimes called SMV or “sake meter value”). This measurement is usually between -4 and +15 (but can range much more widely). Put very simply, this measure shows whether a sake is dry or sweet: -3 is sweet, 0 is sweetish and anything above 4 is getting dry. Of course, other taste components influence the perception of sweetness/dryness, so the Nihonshudo is not always a reliable guide. (For example, a +10 sake with a very full body may not taste very dry at all.)
The acidity of a sake (酸味) also affects its flavor and labels often carry measurements of this tangyness (typically from a lowish acidity of 1.0 to highs in excess of 2.0). They will sometimes also measure amino acids (アミノ酸味), high levels of which can give the sake a feeling of body (again, 1.0 to 2.0 is a normal range). But all these figures can be very confusing. Personally, when I am in a liquor shop, I generally take a glance at the Nihonshudo, and do the rest with my tongue when I get home.
Seven variations
If sake could be reduced merely to six levels of purity and refinement, the world would be a dull place. In fact, there is endless variety in the methods of making and storing sake. Here are some interesting variations to explore:
Yamahai and Kimoto sake Yamahai (山廃) and kimoto (生酛) sakes are known for the wildness and richness of their flavors. Yamahai makers do not add lactic acid when they are making the moto, the yeasty liquid that powers fermentation. Lactic acids are usually added nowadays because they suppress wild yeasts and other micro-organisms that might create unpleasant flavors. Yamahai moto making instead relies on naturally occurring enzymes and lactic acids. It takes up to twice as long and involves additional stages of heating and cooling.
Kimoto sake is made using an older method closely related to yamahai: brewery staff work in freezing temperatures for hours on end with long, flat-headed poles to grind the kōji and water into a paste. Until 1909, this was the way that all sake was made: they thought the back-breaking work was necessary for getting the kōji to work on the rice so that the yeasts could be nourished and protected. Historically, kimoto came first, then the yamahai method dropped the pole work by using a slightly different moto mix and warmer temperatures. The benefits of lactic acid were discovered in 1911, allowing today’s warmer, quicker and more reliable moto making. However, many kura are exploring the complex, untamed tastes that the old natural methods tended to promote.
Namazake (生酒) Most sake is heat-treated twice, once immediately after the sake is pressed from the moromi and once when it is bottled. Namazake is not heat-treated at all and it can smell and taste quite different to your average dry sake: boisterous, nutty, fruity, herb-like, and even spicy tastes can be brought out by the extra life non-pasteurization allows. The usual instruction is to make sure your namazake is carefully refrigerated so that all that microscopic partying does not get out of hand, but Yoram Ofer served me a namazake that he had kept at room temperature for three years. It had a wonderfully mild and honeyed taste. “The industry will tend not to want to do that because it is too risky. You will get the bottles that will go off but it is not true that it always goes bad,” he says. There are two halfway houses to namazake: namachozō (生貯蔵), which is not pasteurized after filtering, and namazume (生詰め), which is not pasteurized at bottling.
Koshu aged sakes, such as these at Shusaron, Shinagawa, Tōkyō (page 68), are enjoying a revival.
Isshin, a sake pub in Sendai prefecture (page 57), has a special annex, equipped with “chirori” heating flasks at every table, for customers who want to warm their sake.
Muroka (無濾過), nigorizake (濁り酒) and doburoku (濁酒) Most sake is charcoal-filtered. Muroka is not and therefore tends to retain some of the heavier flavors and yellowish/green coloring that the filtering is designed to remove. Nigorizake takes the unfiltered thing a step further. Rather than pressing the sake out of the moromi through a fine filter, the nigori makers use only a wide-holed mesh or, alternatively, filter the sake clear and then reintroduce kasu from the moromi afterwards. Either way, some of the solids in the moromi are present in the final alcohol and nigorizake range in appearance from cloudy to positively porridge like. The tastes vary considerably too but there is often a strong acidity. Unpasteurized nigorizake is called kasseishu (活性酒) and can sometimes have a slight fizz to it. At the extreme end of the spectrum, doburoku is not filtered or squeezed at all. It looks like porridge and can be quite hard to like, with a strongly acidic taste. I once spent some time teaching English in a beautiful village in the Japanese Alps called Shirakawa. They have a festival there every October where you can drink free doburoku made by the villagers. It is a religious occasion but, when, in the middle of the festivities, an old Japanese man grabbed my friend by the testicles (just, he said, to “size him up”), I realized people can get seriously drunk on anything if need be.
Fizzy sake Fizzy sake brands such as “Suzune” (すず音) from Ichinokura (ーノ 蔵) in Miyagi and “Puchipuchi” (ぷちぶち) from Suehiro Shuzō (末 廣酒造) in Fukushima have recently been gaining popularity. They usually contain a lower alcohol content than standard sake because making the fizz requires that the tank fermentation be stopped earlier than usual. The bubbles are made by a secondary fermentation in the bottle. These brews are usually filtered (so are not nigorizake) but significant amounts of sugar and yeast must be allowed into the bottles for the secondary fermentation to take place. They are, therefore, usually cloudy and quite sweet.
Koshu The rediscovery of long-neglected traditions of maturing sake is, for me, one of the most exciting developments in the contemporary sake scene. There are diaries and letters showing that aged sake, or koshu (古酒), was valued highly as early as the 13th century and Edo-period shop records tell us that 3–9 year old sake was two or three times more expensive than shinshu (new sake, 新酒). The Honchō Shokkan, a food encyclopedia published in 1697, says: “After 3–5 years the taste is rich and the smell is wonderful and that is the best. From 6–10 years the taste becomes thinner and yet richer. The color darkens and there is a strange aroma. Better than the best!”
Yet, when pioneering makers tried to resurrect koshu making in the
