What is sake ?

Saké is an all-natural rice-based fer­mented alco­holic bev­er­age. Saké is made like beer and served like wine, with tast­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics and alco­hol con­tent very sim­i­lar to wine. Saké is made from four main ingre­di­ents: rice, water, yeast and koji, an enzyme. It is very pure and clean.

Saké is a 6800-year-old bev­er­age. Saké-making imple­ments have been dis­cov­ered in the Yangtze River Val­ley in China dat­ing back to 4800 BC. This about the time that nomadic man set­tled down, and one the­ory holds that the rea­son nomadic man set­tled down was to grow rice so he could enjoy saké on a reg­u­lar basis.

There are over 14,000 dif­fer­ent sakés pro­duced by 1800 sakéries world­wide, pri­mar­ily in Japan. In the United States there are about 200 dif­fer­ent sakés pro­duced by the 4 sakéries in the United States. Three of the sakéries are in Cal­i­for­nia and one is in Oregon.

Saké was actu­ally first made in China, but was later dra­mat­i­cally improved in Japan. It is now made in many coun­tries around the world such as the United States, Brazil, Viet­nam, China, Korea and Japan.

World­wide, one out of three glasses of wine con­sumed is saké. In the United States, two out of one hun­dred glasses of wine are saké. Saké sales in the past 10 years have quadru­pled, and saké enjoy­ment in the US may some day reach the world stan­dard of one out of three glasses of wine.

How Saké is made

As with the best wine made from grapes, the finest saké starts with the finest pre­mium ingre­di­ents — the purest water, high qual­ity saké rice, spe­cial yeast, and koji.

The starches in rice are con­cen­trated in the cen­ter of the rice grain. For pre­mium and super pre­mium saké, the out­side of the grain, con­tain­ing the unde­sir­able fat and pro­tein, is pol­ished away. This exposes the heart of the rice that con­tains the starch that will be con­verted to fer­mentable sugars.

The rice is pol­ished washed and soaked to bring up the water con­tent, and then steamed. Part of the steamed rice is reserved for koji.

Koji is the key to the saké mak­ing process. Koji mold is cul­ti­vated on a bed of steamed rice and this mold eats its way into the rice. As this occurs, the enzymes pro­vided break down the rice’s starch mol­e­cules into smaller sugar mol­e­cules that are food for the yeast. The process relies on the proper tem­per­a­ture and humid­ity and is done in a spe­cial room much like a sauna to main­tain the proper con­di­tions. This process takes about 2 weeks.

Steamed rice and koji are sent to the yeast starter room, and moto (yeast starter) is pre­pared. Moto is added over a period of 4 days to the rice, water and koji. Fer­men­ta­tion occurs over a period of 18–32 days. The saké is then fil­tered, aged, pas­teur­ized and bottled.

Types of Saké

There are two broad cat­e­gories of sake: Jun­mai and Honjozo.

Jun­mai means that no dis­tilled alco­hol has been added.

Hon­jozo means that dis­tilled alco­hol has been added.

Hon­jozo in Japan is defined as no more than 5% dis­tilled alco­hol added by vol­ume. There are sakés that have more alco­hol added than Hon­jozo, but they are almost never imported into the United States.

In Japan, about 88% of all sakés made have dis­tilled alco­hol added. This dis­tilled alco­hol can be processed grain alco­hol. For the finer sakés, it may be dis­tilled alco­hol col­lected from the esters dur­ing fer­men­ta­tion and dis­tilled down in a mini-distillery to be added back dur­ing the blend­ing of the saké to enhance the aroma. Either method of adding dis­tilled alco­hol to saké is ille­gal in the United States. How­ever, this Hon­jozo style of saké can be imported into the United States.

Within these two broad cat­e­gories of saké, there are sev­eral types related to qual­ity. The qual­ity is deter­mined by how much of the outer ker­nel of the rice is milled away. Milling removes the pro­tein and fatty acids in rice ker­nels and leaves the dense starch packet at the cen­ter of the ker­nel. The more of the outer coat­ing that is milled away, the higher the qual­ity the saké will be.

How to serve Saké

In 2 words: Chill Out!

Good saké is always served chilled, mediocre saké can be served warm and bad saké should be boiled! Econ­omy saké may be served warm and this has its place on a cold win­ter night. The cer­e­mony of serv­ing saké warm, where you don’t pour for your­self, but pour for oth­ers, sends a sign of respect.

Chilled pre­mium sakés were first intro­duced in the late 1960’s. Saké-making tech­nol­ogy, par­tic­u­larly in rice milling, had improved so dra­mat­i­cally that it enabled saké­mak­ers to make sakés so del­i­cate they are actu­ally dam­aged by heat.

Some peo­ple enjoy using the tra­di­tional square masu boxes to drink saké. This was a tra­di­tional rice-measuring device, typ­i­cally made from aro­matic cedar, which imparts aro­mas to the saké. Other peo­ple enjoy their saké on the rocks in a tum­bler. Our favorite way to serve saké is chilled in a wine glass, which enhances the enjoy­ment of the sub­tle aro­mas and fla­vors of pre­mium saké.

When serv­ing saké chilled, we rec­om­mend serv­ing it at 45 degrees F (7 degrees C), which makes for a won­der­fully refresh­ing first taste. In a wine glass, the tem­per­a­ture of the saké grad­u­ally increases, which changes the aroma and fla­vors and is great fun to follow.

Saké should be stored in a cool place, out of strong light. It does not age like wine does, and is best when fresh. Once opened, saké will stay fresh for about a week in the refrigerator.

Saké enjoy­ment is grow­ing rapidly in the US because of three main trends. The first is the grow­ing influ­ence of Asian cui­sine. Amer­i­cans enjoy an Asian wine, saké, with their Asian cui­sine. The sec­ond major trend is the grow­ing aware­ness of the impor­tance of a healthy lifestyle. Unlike wine, saké has no sul­fites. Twenty five per­cent of all Amer­i­cans believe that they are aller­gic to sul­fites. Saké has one-third the acid­ity of wine, so it is easy on the stom­ach. Pre­mium saké is vir­tu­ally hang­over free because it is so pure. The third trend is that saké is so mix­able, and it has become the base for many excit­ing new cocktails.

Saké can be paired with any foods that wine is paired with, but it goes excep­tion­ally well with lightly pre­pared seafood and veg­eta­bles and, of course, any Asian cui­sine. Saké can be com­pared to steamed white rice, in that it har­mo­nizes with what­ever it is served with, actu­ally enhanc­ing the aro­mas and taste of most foods.

Saké is a very ver­sa­tile drink. It can be served warm, chilled or on the rocks. It can be used as an excel­lent low alco­hol mixer in cock­tails. Saké is the secret ingre­di­ent of many chefs and can be used in cook­ing just like a wine. It is an excel­lent mixer and is the basis for many won­der­ful new cocktails.