LET US face it — most of us are very enamored by Japanese food and cuisine, and why shouldn’t we be? Japanese dishes are, generally speaking, fresh, light, healthy, and delicious. Normally, for my Japanese meal beverage accompaniment, I will opt for Loire white wines, either a Sauvignon Blanc or Chenin Blanc, any of the Alsacian white varietals from Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris to Riesling, or, as experienced lately, Japan’s own gem of a white wine, Koshu. But there is no denying that traditional Japanese saké (made from rice) may actually still be the best complementary drink for these dishes, even in the light of the marketing-created popularity of the whisky highball.
HOW DO THEY MAKE SAKÉ?
Saké comes from rice. Unlike regular grape wines that ferment using only natural grape sugars, to make saké, the sugar from rice needed to ferment into alcohol must first be converted from starch. The starch comes from polished rice. This is more like a brewing process similar to beer. But while beer brewing does convert starch to sugar and sugar to alcohol in two stages, with saké, this process is done simultaneously, known as parallel fermentation.
When saké is being brewed, the koji-kin (scientific name: Aspergillus oryzae) enzymes convert the starch into glucose and the saké yeast converts glucose into alcohol, with these two processes happening simultaneously. No malting is involved unlike beer. The key term here is koji-kin from the word koji. Koji refers to the steamed rice that has the mold spore, or koji-kin. This mold creates several enzymes as it spreads, and they break the starches found in rice into sugars that are fermented by the yeast cells into carbon dioxide and alcohol. Koji is cultivated in a special room in the kura (brewery) called the Koji Muro. For saké, only rice, water, yeast, koji, and distilled alcohol (on some classified saké) are used.
HOW EACH INGREDIENT AFFECTS SAKE QUALITY
Let us elaborate a bit on these ingredients. The main ingredient of course is the rice. Sakamai is the rice variety used, and while there are several to choose from, the undisputed king of saké rice is the Yamada Nishiki rice, primarily harvested in Hyogo, Okayama, and Fukuoka. The Yamada Nishiki is very fragrant with nice subtle flavors. Other sakamais used in popular sakés are Omachi rice, Miyama Nishiki rice, Gohyakumangoku rice, and Oseto rice to name a few. Like wine varietals, the sakamais vary in flavors, with some showing more earthiness, others more sweetness, etc. There is also the regional aspect depending on where the saké kuras are located.
Water is the second most important ingredient even if in fact it makes up around 80% of a final saké product. Water is used when the rice is washed, rinsed, soaked, and during the steaming and fermentation processes. And even when the finished saké is almost done, a little water is often added at the end to bring the alcohol down from the naturally occurring 19-20% or so, to industry standard 15-16%.
Yeast plays its role in fermentation but also, just like in wines, certain yeast strains can give rise to different chemical compounds and reactions, so choice of yeast is also crucial. We already discussed koji and its role in the brewing.
The final ingredient is the distilled alcohol that is occasionally added to saké. This is where techniques and styles come into the equation. There are many reasons for adding brewers’ distilled alcohol into the saké, but by law, the amount of alcohol you are allowed to add in the production of classified premium saké is strictly capped at 130 liters of alcohol per metric ton of rice used in brewing or 25% of the final alcohol content. The varying reasons for added distilled alcohol is to gain additional flavors and aromas, to make the drink crisper, to make it drier, and for extra structure.
SAKÉ QUALITY CLASSIFICATION BASE ON RICE POLISHING RATE
There are basically two broad classifications of saké: the mass produced Futsushu or Ordinary Saké and the Tokutei Meishoshu or Special Designate Sake. Futsushu is sort of like generic wine’s bottom status in the wine quality hierarchy. There are no rules on rice polishing ratio, and on added distilled alcohol to increase volume and make for more finished product sakés. Over 80% of sakés made are Futsushu.
The Tokutei Meishoshu on the other hand, is where the quality and distinguishable levels of saké from rice-polishing ratios, are determined. The reason being that the more rice is polished, the more refined and concentrated the flavors. For these premium classified sakés, polishing can be 70%, 60%, 50% to as low as 35% of the original weight of the rice. This means that for the most premium saké, only 35% of the original rice is brewed and fermented in its final product.
There are six different sub-classifications within the Tokutei Meishoshu. Here are the six in ascending order of premium ranking:
• Honjozo — rice-polishing ratio of 70% or less of original weight, with added distilled alcohol
• Junmai — pure rice saké, made from only rice, water, and koji; rice-polishing ratio of 70% or less
• Ginjo — rice-polishing ratio of 60% or less, with a small amount of added distilled alcohol
• Junmai Ginjo — pure rice saké, made from only rice, water, and koji; rice-polishing ratio of 60% or less
• Dai Ginjo — rice-polishing ratio of 50% or less, with a small amount of added distilled alcohol
• Junmai Dai Ginjo — pure rice saké, made from only rice, water, and koji; rice-polishing ratio of 50% or less
These are the basic saké classifications, but there is much more to discover, and in my next column, I will share my trip to a very traditional and craft saké maker near Tokyo, Katayama Shuzo Co., Ltd. Their award-winning sakés are their genshus — another saké term that means undiluted saké. More on this amazing Japanese drink soon.
The author has been a member of the Federation Internationale des Journalists et Ecrivains du Vin et des Spiritueux or FIJEV since 2010. For comments, inquiries, wine event coverage, and other wine-related concerns, e-mail the author at protegeinc@yahoo.com. He is also on Twitter at twitter.com/sherwinlao.
