he added.
Although barley sake never took off, Korschelt did leave a lasting mark on the sake industry. To combat the persistent problem of batches going to rot, he suggested that brewers add salicylic acid (a compound that is now used to fight pimples and dandruff, but back then was a beer preservative) to their sake. His advice sparked the increased use of additives in sake that were thought to be cutting-edge chemistry. But sake laced with salicylic acid was mildly poisonous, and by 1969, all brewers banned it. (Gekkeikan, the Kyoto sake-making giant, had already stopped using salicylic acid by the mid-1910s.)
In 1878, Oskar Korschelt learned that sake brewers had been using pasteurization techniques centuries before Louis Pasteur was even born.
This is a honnidaru-style cask, traditionally covered in a straw matting emblazoned with the sake brand. Here, it reads Taketsuru (see next page).
SAKE TO WHISKY: THE TAKETSURU NAME
“This is difficult to talk about, but it’s something I should say,” says Toshio Taketsuru, taking a sip of green tea. “Initially, I didn’t want to take over this brewery.”
Toshio Taketsuru is the 14th president of Taketsuru Shuzo in Hiroshima, a brewery known for its full-bodied sake. The family name is also known because Masataka Taketsuru was the father of Japanese whisky and the founder of the Nikka Whisky Distilling Company. Toshio speaks in a deep, clear voice, and shares the same strong jawline of his whisky-making ancestor.
Outside the brewery are posters of the famed whisky maker. A statue of Masataka and his Scotland-born wife, Rita, stands up the street. “Masataka didn’t grow up in this house,” explains Toshio. “His family home was about five minutes away, and his father Keijiro came here to brew sake when we needed help. That’s probably how Masataka got interested in making alchohol.” That, in turn, got him interested in whisky.
Toshio wasn’t as keen to make liquor. The pressure of taking over the family brewery was daunting.
“My son is two now,” he says. “He might want to be a policeman, a carpenter or a pro baseball player. But … he’s a Taketsuru. Everyone in this town knows that. I started to gradually hate that expectation. I didn’t want to be involved in the brewery at all.”
After high school, Taketsuru won admission to prestigious Osaka University, where his father, Hisao, and Masataka before him had studied booze making. “I told my dad I got into Osaka University,” says Toshio. “I didn’t tell him it was to study physics. He found out during enrollment, and was a bit shocked.” It seemed the brewery would not continue, which was especially sad considering the lengths his ancestors had taken to keep it going.
“My grandfather, Kyousuke Taketsuru, was killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima,” Toshio says. “He had a bad leg, so he hadn’t been able to join the military. Plus, he was running a sake brewery, and the troops needed sake to drink, so that was part of the war effort.” With the entire country weary and war-torn, Kyousuke felt he had to do something more; he couldn’t just watch from the sidelines. “He went to Hiroshima to help put out fires,” Toshio says of the grandfather he never met. He pauses, taking another sip of tea. “My grandfather didn’t have to be in Hiroshima city, because he was handicapped and he was making sake,” says Toshio. “But he went anyway.” Kyousuke’s wife was left with a four-year-old son, Hisao, and a sake brewery. The Taketsuru family did their best to make it through those difficult postwar years until Hisao was old enough to take the reins. There was no question whether or not he would run the brewery.
In the postwar era, multinational Japanese companies dominated the globe. Working in a brewery seemed old fashioned. “My father was resigned to the brewery not continuing.” But as graduation approached, the younger Taketsuru started mulling over his career. “I really started thinking about the family business,” he says. “I didn’t have a burning passion for physics. I was just running away from expectations. I thought, was it worth casually ending a sake brewery that had existed for 260 years?” Toshio Taketsuru made up his mind. He was coming home.
“These breweries are passed down through the generations, but the youth are asked to make life-defining decisions before they’ve even drunk sake,” Taketsuru says. “When you’re 20, you still don’t have a developed palate, and you’re asked to devote your life to something you don’t quite understand.”
Taketsuru’s young son scampers into the room. He’s wearing a Star Wars T-shirt. I tell him that my youngest son loves Star Wars too. The boy smiles and darts out of the room. “Kids have their own lives and things they want to do,” Taketsuru says. “And I guess we can always have more children.”
Toshio Taketsuru at his family’s brewery.
Taketsuru Shuzo uses both wooden tubs and metal tanks for brewing.
Statues of Masataka Taketsuru and his wife Rita stand down the street from the Taketsuru brewery.
Taketsuru Shuzo is closed to the public, but it’s not uncommon for sake and whisky fans to make a pilgrimage just to take a snapshot of the brewery’s exterior.
In 1987, the Shinkame Brewery was the first in Japan to switch all of its sakes to junmai-shu. Since then, the brewery has spearheaded the junmai-only movement among sake breweries. See page 243 for tasting note.
TYPES OF SAKE
Sake comes in several major and niche types. The various categories are distinguished by the way they are made or their ingredients, and not by the rice variety used or the region.
Pure Rice-Only Sake
Junmai-shu 純米酒: Literally “pure-rice sake,” junmai is made from rice, koji, yeast and water. It doesn’t have added alcohol or a minimum polishing ratio. The minimum polishing ratio of 70 percent (meaning 30 percent of the grain was milled or polished away) was abolished in 2003. Junmai-shu is often noted for being full bodied and having robust, even earthy flavors. Originally all sake was junmai-shu.
“Alcohol-Added” Sake
In Japanese, alcohol-added sake is called aruten, which is short for arukooru tenka, literally meaning “alcohol added.” The majority of Japanese sake made is aruten, and typically falls into one of the two following categories:
Futsu-shu 普通酒: Literally “regular sake,” this everyday
