to 1993, the Japanese government categorized sake into different grades and taxed them accordingly. Tamanohikari didn’t submit its expensive pure-rice sake to the tax office, reasoning that it would be taxed less to help keep its already high price down, even though the country would classify it at a lower grade. “It was grade-two sake,” says Ujita—the cheaper stuff—even though Tamanohikari’s sake was a premium sake at a premium price.
The sign reads Kanzen mutenka seishu tamanohikari or “Completely additive-free refined sake Tamanohikari.”
“It was comical, because, at department stores, the staff would say, ‘This is Tamanohikari and it’s made from 100 percent rice,’” says Ujita. “The customer would ask what grade it was, be told it was grade two, and then say they couldn’t buy lower-grade sake as a gift. The customers wouldn’t even listen.” (Japan’s gift-giving culture, incidentally, helped ensure steady sake sales during the postwar era; companies would send bottles of sake for summer and winter gifts.) Fukutoki Ujita knew that pure-rice sake might not catch on if people didn’t understand what it was. “He had to change perceptions, and he needed regular folks to understand,” says the younger Ujita. “Which is why he opened a restaurant, our first, in Tokyo Station.” That was in July 1969.
A Tamanohikari worker sorts bottles as they come down the bottling line.
Tamanohikari Black Label is a junmai daiginjo made with Omachi rice polished to 35 percent, which is quite a feat considering how difficult polishing Omachi can be. The tassels are all tied by hand. For more on Omachi, see pages 80–81.
While the general public might not have yet embraced the pure-rice sake, other sake makers were starting to. In Hiroshima, Kamoizumi Shuzo began making its own mutenka-shu in 1965, and after some trial and error made what would be considered a junmai ginjo today. “We didn’t aim to turn junmai-shu into a luxury product,” says Kamoizumi’s Kazuhiro Maegaki. “In 1965, when the limits on the rice supply were lifted, it became possible to brew sake without adding brewer’s alcohol.” The brewery did a series of tests, attempting to manage the higher cost of raw materials as well as adjusting the different flavors and clarity of those early junmai revivals. Finally, in 1972, Kamoizumi released its all-rice brew. “When it went on sale,” says Maegaki, “it wasn’t labeled as junmai-shu, but rather, mutenka seishu” (that is, additive-free refined sake). During that same period, Hiroshi Uehara, a sake consultant and researcher, worked with brewers in Tottori to bring back junmai-shu in 1967, while in Kyoto, Masuda Tokubee Shoten was already seeing how its junmai brew would age. Chiyonosono Shuzo, a brewery in Kumamoto, launched its own junmai-shu in 1968.
The next decade put the pure-rice sake revival into high gear. In 1970, there was a rice surplus, which led to the repeal of a law that allotted only a certain amount for sake production. Suddenly, brewers were able to get their hands on as much rice as they needed. The Junsui Nihonshu Kyoukai (Pure Japanese Sake Association) was founded in 1972; its members included Tamanohikari and Kamoizumi. In the years that followed, breweries began labeling their sakes as “junmai-shu” (“pure-rice sake”) instead of “mutenka-shu.” In 1982, the Shinkame brewery in Saitama because the first brewery in the postwar era to switch all of its production to junmai-shu only, something that is now standard in many craft breweries.
“As of 2017, junmai-shu comprises 25.9 percent of the sake made in Japan,” says Ujita. “Meaning that nearly three-quarters of it still has added alcohol.” It also means that junmai-shu still has room to grow.
Niche Sakes
These niche offerings may be hard to find, but that doesn’t mean they are less important or less delicious than more common brews.
Kijoshu dessert sake 貴醸酒: This sake was born in 1973 after the National Research Institute of Brewing decided there should be a luxurious nihonshu to serve at diplomatic functions instead of wine or champagne. A researcher named Makoto Satoh devised a sweet brew that used sake in the later brewing stage instead of water. When sake is adding during the final stage, fermentation stops. The yeast is overwhelmed by all the sugar, and producing acidic compounds. All the sugars that should have been converted into alcohol are left behind, resulting in a delightfully sweet, yet highly acidic brew. According to an imperial manuscript dating from 927, there was a similar historical precedent for this sake, but kijoshu is very much a modern invention. For more on kijoshu, see pages 150–151.
Shiga Prefecture brewery Emishiki is known for its kijoshu dessert sakes. Here is a a collection of releases at the brewery.
Koshu aged sake 古酒: Literally “old sake,” koshu has no legal definition. Within the sake industry, any sake that has been matured within the brewing year is technically koshu, and the term jukusei koshu (matured koshu) is used for brews with older vintages of three years or more. However, consumers tend to refer to any sake that’s aged for an extended period of time as koshu, with the longer maturation period resulting in rich flavors that will appeal to whisky, sherry and brandy drinkers.
In 1966, the Kyoto brewery Masuda Tokubee Shoten, a favorite of renowned film director Akira Kurosawa, revived koshu. The brewery’s president at the time discovered a description of koshu in Honcho shokkan (A mirror of our country’s food), a compendium of Japanese food published in 1697. “Shinshu is newly brewed 100 percent rice sake, and koshu is 100 percent rice sake that is over a year old,” reads the text, which also notes that koshu’s aroma does not become pleasant and its flavor doesn’t deepen until the three-year mark. The maturation process, with sake aging in jugs, was also described. Masuda Tokubee Shoten brewed what would become its first koshu in 1966 from Yamada Nishiki rice with a polishing ratio of 35 percent and released it a decade later as Kohaku Hikari (Amber Light). It was a domestic-only premium product, then priced at 5,000 yen for the smaller 720 ml (1½-pint) bottle and 10,000 yen for the larger 1.8-liter (4-pint) bottle. Masuda Tokubee Shoten still makes its 10-year Kohaku Hikari, which it now ships around the globe.
Now, in the brewery’s attic, more than 1,200 20-liter (5-gallon) ceramic jugs are stacked up like casks to age. The stopper of each jug is made from paulownia wood and sealed with washi (Japanese paper). There are glazed and unglazed ceramic jugs; the unglazed ones are highly susceptible to evaporation in Kyoto’s notoriously humid summers. Like whisky and wine in casks, a portion of the koshu in jugs evaporates into the air. In English, this is called the “angel’s share,” which is literally translated into Japanese as tenshi no wakemae. But what percentage of koshu evaporates each year? Masuda Tokubee Shoten brewer Guillaume Ozanne reckons it’s difficult to give an exact number, because while the ceramic jugs look largely uniform, each one is handcrafted and therefore has its own unique properties. How much koshu evaporates can ultimately depend on the jug, and the brewers won’t find that out until afterward. Sometimes, they can lose 20 percent, while other times, they actually lose 100 percent. “We were the first to bring back koshu, and we’re still the only ones to age it like this,” says the Normandy-born Ozanne.
After Masuda Tokubee Shoten revived the brewing of koshu, a small number of breweries, such as Sawanotsuru, followed suit (see pages 131–33). To avoid evaporation during maturation, other breweries either cold-store their koshu or age it at low temperatures.
Taruzake
