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Sake Sensation ~
It may come in a gorgeous bottle, at several temperatures and in a variety that rivals the wine
list at a good French restaurant
Article by Justine Sterling
WAVE Journey
Women's Adventures, Vacations & Experiences ~
Your Journey Starts Here!
Sake sales have nearly
tripled in this decade.
“Kanpai,” says Jessie Nelson, the bartender at Satsko sake
bar in New York’s Alphabet City, as he clinks his small sake
glass to mine, then to the bar, and sets it to his lips. I do the
same, shakily hitting the bar, wondering if that is tradition or
just an odd tic he has. Tradition, it turns out. By hitting the
bar with the glass you show reverence to the house that is
serving you. We both sip. What I taste isn’t what I was
expecting. Far more complicated than what my younger self
had dropped into beers and gulped down, this sake was
light, floral. This was something to get excited about. There is
a world of sake beyond the house bottles most of us have
come to know.
Sake, or Japanese rice wine, is growing in popularity in the
United States. Sales have nearly tripled in this decade, to $29
million by the end of 2007, according to U.S. Department of
Agriculture data. Sake bars are cropping up, and demand has produced several sake-
only stores: True Sake in San Francisco –the first – followed by Sake Nomi in Seattle, and
Sakaya in Manhattan. Japanese restaurants are handing patrons sake menus that rival
the length and variety of wine lists at expensive French restaurants.
Yet Americans don’t know much about the “drink of the gods,” as it is called in Japan. Let’
s say you’re ordering fish, a dish you might pair with a white, fruity wine. Sake virgins
might do well with Nigori, unfiltered sake, Nelson suggests. If you want to drink
something bigger, dryer and more like a red wine, then you choose a Junmai - pure
distilled rice without added alcohol, or a Shokubai.
But it gets more complicated. Sake, like wine, has different levels of refinement and class.
Grades are determined by how much of each grain of rice is removed. “You have fewer
impurities; [the fats and proteins that surround the starchy center] tend to contribute to
flavors that are undesirable,” explained Sakaya owner Rick Smith. The house sake at
your local sushi bar is usually domestic, and served hot – to hide its imperfections, and
strong alcohol taste.
As an example of sweeter sake, Nelson pours first the house, a Nigori Shochikubai, which
came in a green bottle bigger than a bowling pin. Since Nigoris aren’t filtered, the
saccharine liquid was almost thick, like corn syrup. In contrast, the higher-tier sake
Kamoizumi, a Nigori Ginjo, is much more refined. Though still opaque and white, it is
subtly sweet at first taste, then dry at the end.
A young couple walks in. They order a tasting of three hot sakes and sip cautiously,
pulling the clay bottles out of the perfectly warmed water and pouring generously for
each other, just as it should be done. They talk about friends, jobs, and then agree they
prefer the middle one, the same higher-quality sake I tasted. These are the people who
are starting to discover sake. Nelson says that this is the crowd that comes in on nights
and weekends, looking to find something new, something different than a beer.
Different occasions and types call for hot, cold, lukewarm or room temperature sakes.
While Nelson would not have hot sake with a meal—he would rather nurse it on a cold
night — some sake sommeliers will use the same bottle at different temperatures for
different points of the meal. Changing the temperature can endow one bottle with many
different flavors and mouth-feels. In Japan, “in certain local sake pubs, there are people
whose specific job it is to warm the sake to a specific temperature for that sake and also
for a particular customer,” according to Smith. Beginners should take the sommelier’s
temperature recommendation– and maybe wait until they are regulars to start asking for
it hitohada (lukewarm).
Another hurdle: remembering what you drank, without having to learn Japanese. “The
main way in which you get to know these things,” Smith says, “is the same way you get
to know wine; you just build up a reservoir of experience.” He even suggests “taking
pictures with your phone, or writing down things about it that struck you as being
pleasant or unpleasant.” There are also usually translated names underneath the
Japanese title: Heaven’s Door, Otter Fest. Nelson has simpler advice. “The only way to
really know this stuff,” he said before finishing off a glass, “is to drink a lot of it.”