Getting Up Close and Personal with Sake!

24 Feb 2013: Enjoying my coffee and warm croissant with strawberry jam at Haneda Airport, with almost 2 hours to spare before the flight back to Hong Kong, I can now reflect on the Advanced Sake Sommelier Course organised by the Sake Sommelier Association (www.sakesommelierassociation.com) that I just completed. Our group of 6 students led by founders Xavier Chapelou and Kumiko Ohta (husband and wife team) traipsed around sake breweries across the prefectures of Chiba, Kyoto and Hyogo during an intensive 4-day course. On this course, I learnt a huge amount, most of it was firsthand, directly from toji masters and kurabito (through translations). Despite the newly gained knowledge, it is still rather difficult to pin down a typical style of sake from a brewery or a prefecture. Changes involving a number of parameters such as choice of rice, polishing rate (seimaibuai), quality/type of water, rice washing and soaking time, fermentation temperature and duration, type of shubo (Kimoto, Yamahai or Sokuju), addition of spirit alcohol, use of pasteurization or not, ageing period, etc..etc.....all would have a fundamental influence on the final style of sake. The diversity of sake styles naturally means that there is no one sake style for each style/cooking method of Japanese food: sashimi, tempura, grilling and broiling, amongst other methods, with the numerous possibilities of sauces. We also learnt that sake does not need to be paired with Japanese cuisine. The pairing possibilities are numerous as there are so many different styles of sake, from the basic groups of Junmai, Ginjo, Nama, Honjozo and aged sakes. Honda-san made a very good comment: best sake should be like water: pure, light, elegant and clear, and above all, understated……



A sugidama hanging at entrance of sakagura

Day 1: Our trip began at the JR Travel Office in Tokyo Station where we each got the wonderful 7-day Japan Rail Pass and introduced ourselves to each other. An hour later, after changing trains at Sakura, we arrived at Minamishisui station in the Chiba Prefecture where we were greeted by a friendly old gentleman who took our suitcases in the back of his pick-up truck while we walked for about 15 minutes, up a gentle hill, to the Iinuma Honke brewery. The pure and clean rural air refreshed the mind and removed any remnants of sleepiness. Minamishisui is a small village in the Chiba prefecture, which has the advantage of being close to Tokyo and surrounded by water and forests, is blessed with abundant good quality sea and land produce, and more importantly a good supply of spring water. The sight of the ‘sugidama’ (sugi - Japanese for cedar) at the entrance of the brewery confirmed that we had arrived at a 'kura' - Japanese for sake brewery. Once rid of our outdoor shoes, clad in lab coats, with hair covered, we were greeted by the President, a member of the Iinuma family, who reminded us that the number of breweries in Japan had declined from the height of 20,000 breweries in the Meiji Period to around 1,500 today and his 300-year-old family brewery is amongst those upholding traditional practices as much as possible, while enhancing quality and productivity with technological improvements where necessary. President Iinuma-san believes that sake is made to be enjoyed with food, and this is reflected in the styles of their sakes. Although the brewery is called Iinuma Honke, the brand name (‘meigara’) for their sake is Kino-ene. After the introduction, we were shown around the brewery by Kawaguchi-san, a young-looking toji master (our group had developed this theory for the secret of staying youthful - it's something to do with the rice!). Kawaguchi-san is the first full-time toji master at Iinuma Honke – he started work at the brewery in 1996 and before his arrival, the brewery only retained toji masters from other prefectures during the sake making season. The brewery now employs 5 full-time staff…with more staff in the bottling/labeling and other areas. Given that it's our first visit, we were totally uninhibited with the velocity and abundance of our questions. Kawaguchi-san answered each one of them skilfully and demonstrated his deep knowledge. He was the first to indicate that the most important step of the process relevant to the quality of sake was rice washing and soaking, something which was affirmed by the other toji masters whom we met subsequent to this visit. Of course the quality of the rice and the water also played their important roles.


The very yummy salmon at top left corner of the bento box!

 

Excellent Nama-shu!

The delicious bento lunch served in a traditional tatami setting at the brewery's private dining area was a real treat (more for the stomach than for the legs) - particularly delicious was the sake-kasu marinated salmon - 'oishi'! It went very well with the Junmai Ginjo. The sake making season started in November, after the harvest in October and it would go on till March. So our visit was very well-timed to allow us to taste the freshly made nama-sake which tasted so much fresher at the brewery, just days/weeks after it was made! Lunch was followed by a visit to the shop which sold not just sake, but also food products made by the Kino-ene Farm, such as by-products of sake, including sake kasu (which apart from its great culinary application, is also a wonderful cosmetic product - it can be applied when mixed with water as a facial mask!), Japanese rice crackers (made from the nuka - dust from polishing rice) and pickled vegetables (also using nuka), as well as local cakes made with shoju or sake. Had we lingered longer in the shop, we would have missed our train connection back to Tokyo to catch the Shinkansen to our next stop - historic Kyoto!
In Kyoto, we stayed at the Dormy Inn Premium Kyoto Ekimae Hotel which I highly recommend if you are planning your trip on a modest budget. Each room was compactly designed and equipped, complete with free wifi, coffee (proper filter coffee) and tea making facility, powerful shower, and a bed with an ergonomic pillow. There was even an ‘onsen’ (hot spring) which almost every member of our group benefitted from to get a very good night's sleep. Breakfast was the best part and if you don't have time to grab breakfast, free coffee is served in the lobby!
Noda-san of the International Department of Gekkeikan brewery (a much larger scale brewery than Iinuma Honke) came to the hotel to meet us at the hotel and took us on a walk through a geisha district in historic Kyoto. Unfortunately it was a rather cold night and we did not see any geishas during our walk. Our restaurant is called Kappo Bardoi (http://www.kappobardoi.com/) The restaurant served kaiseki menus and on special evenings, there would be a geisha performance to be enjoyed during the meal.

Great find in Kyoto!

We started with a fantastic tofu dish (Kyoto tofu is really creamy and smooth)! It was creamy and was served with a sesame sauce – so delicious, almost could be described as a rich tofu mousse! This was followed by a number of small dishes, including some really delicious baby squid, extremely fresh sashimi which only just arrived at the restaurant and most delicate tempura. Over dinner, we tried the Junmai Daiginjo of Gekkeikan. Very elegant, fresh and nicely fruity, with banana and citrus overtones on top of the herbal and grainy notes underneath.


Day 2: The next morning, we met with Noda-san at 8:15 in the morning. He took us to a high point at the railway station and showed us how Kyoto was surrounded by mountains, hence the supply of very good spring water. We then took a train to visit a temple near the Gekkeikan brewery and tasted the famous soft water from Fushimi-ku. Gekkeikan (www.gekkeikan.co.jp) started in 1637 by the Okura family during the era of the 3rd Shogun Tokogawa of the Edo Period. The Gekkeikan brand name was registered in 1905 – it means ‘laurel crown’. The year-round Otegura brewery was first built in 1961. Gekkeikan also a brewery in California and this started in 1989. Gekkeikan ranks within top 10 (around 5th?) in total production amongst Japanese sake breweries, but it is one of 4 breweries permitted to supply sake to the Imperial Family – the others are Sakuramasamune, Kikumasamune and Nihonsakari. Gekkeikan was also responsible for the development of Yeast No. 2 registered with the Brewers’ Association of Japan. (Sakuramasamune contributed Yeast No.1). We needed some statistics to get a better grasp of the size of Gekkeikan – imagine this, 20,000 kilograms of rice being steamed every day, 365 days a year! Each kilo of rice would typically produce 1 litre of sake! Here, 60 people work full-time in the brewery, and 100 people in the bottling/labeling department. Automation is used as much as possible to increase productivity and efficiency. For example, the soaking, draining, steaming and cooling down of rice (a process which we later saw to take place in the early hours of the morning in a smaller brewery) would be computer controlled so that the workers all work from 8 am to 5 pm, one shift only. A mad dash back to the hotel after lunch to collect our suitcases – we just about caught the Shinkansen to Himeji, before the local train to our next stop, a little town called Aboshi, in the Hyogo prefecture, where we stayed in a charming seaside hotel called Hotel Seashore Mitsumisaki in Tatsuno – literally by the sea. We arrived just in time to admire the most beautiful sunset.



Local oyster and fish roe in wasabi sauce

 The hotel seems to be a popular location for wedding ceremonies and banquets. The proximity to the sea also meant that we had good access to some local produce – the oyster in the menu came from local waters! This evening we had a very sumptuous meal, all dishes paired with the sakes of Honda Shoten brewery (Brand Name Tatsuriki). Honda Shoten, now run by the 4th generation member of the Honda family, is a smaller scale brewery, employing 30 people. A couple of the sakes were served in white wine glasses and they tasted distinctly differently in smaller sake cups. We asked Honda-san what we should look for in a top quality sake. To which he succinctly replied, “the best sake should be like water: pure, elegant and understated”.


The sakes we tried from Honda Shoten

Day 3: Sake Making Day! We were off to a most brutal early morning start at 4 am when we were loaded into a taxi which took us and our suitcases to Aboshi where Honda Shoten Brewery is located. The crisp early morning air immediately dispelled any lingering thoughts of the nice warm bed we left behind at Hotel Seashore. The cold was particularly felt through the soles of the rubber wellingtons we wore……had we known, we would have put a couple of those wonderful heat pads inside the boots! The first person who greeted us was the Chairman, Senior Honda-san (the uncle of the current President)! Park-san (General Manager) and Yumi-san (Export Manager) were also there to greet us. It was a most educational day, from steaming rice at 6 am, to cooling rice, working in the koji room, transporting the rice to the moromi tanks, and visiting the shubo rooms, rice washing and soaking. We experienced huge temperature differences – someone said it later that it was like going from Alaska to Hawaii in one second! We had firsthand evidence that the amino acids (from the breaking down of protein) in the outer layer of rice was wonderful for the skin – our hands felt really smooth and hydrated after working with the rice for a while. Natural moisturizer! No wonder the koji master has such soft and supple looking skin!

After lunch, we went to watch how rice was washed and soaked, supervised by the toji master. The toji master here was the youngest ever in Japan to qualify as a toji master at the age of 27! He is now 37 (but to most of us, he looked about 17!) Everything worked like clockwork with extreme precision. As we finished slightly ahead of time, we were treated to something rather special at Honda-san’s home – a matcha ceremony. We felt really privileged to be sitting down at his family ceremony hall, served matcha by his wife. We were taught how to make the matcha frothy and how to turn the bowl before sipping the tea. A very elegant tradition! At 4:30 pm, we headed to the rice polishing machine area where we had our Kampai Celebration to celebrate the end of a long and hard day of sake making! Once again we tried different sakes and this time, we tried 4 Namagenshu, made with different rice: Yamada Nishiki (the best), Yamada-ho (the mother of Yamada Nishiki), Omachi (the father) and Shinriki (the oldest). It was fascinating to try them side by side. For me, Shinriki demonstrated a very distinct citrus and floral note, with a lighter texture, whereas Yamada Nishiki was much more pear, banana, with mineral notes, with a fuller body. Omachi contributed the weight and body to Yamada Nishiki’s DNA and Yamada-Ho the perfumed bouquet. We also had the Daiginjo served warm and this went very well with the egg omlette! Despite the language barrier, we were all able to share in Honda-san’s passion for sake and appreciate his hospitality and friendliness! As we were leaving, a group of 60 arrived for more sake tasting at 6 pm! My favourite sake from this brewery is the special edition Junmai Daiginjo Nihon no Sakura (definitely worth getting a bottle if you can find it!), followed by the Junmai Daiginjo Akitsu.

It was a huge relief when we finally checked into the hotel at Kobe! For me, it was lights out!

Day 4: A slightly later start in the morning on our last day of the course…..today we are visiting breweries in the Nada region of Kobe. Nada means seashore and there are 5 districts in Nada (Nada Go Go). Nada is famous for sake making because of its location close to the sea, allowing access to ships to transport sake to imperial capital of Edo, as well as the access to Miya Mizu (the local spring water from Nishinomiya City which is hard and rich in minerals such as potassium, calcium and phosphorus, with a little iron content), abundant supply of rice and the cold winds that blow through the Rokka Mountains, thus lowering temperatures for sake making and suppressing the growth of bacteria.

Our first visit started at 10:30 am at the largest brewery in Japan – Hakutsuru (www.hakutsuru.co.jp). Hakutsuru started in 1743. Production here is around 60 million bottles (1.8 litre) (?). Being the largest, Hakutsuru has invested much into research and development. In 2004, it started developing a new type of rice called Hakutsuru Nishiki which was officially registered in 2007. Hakutsuru has also developed its own cosmetic product line, using by-products of sake making. The moisturizer is particularly popular!

Next we visited Sakuramasamune (since 1625). Despite being the largest before the Kobe earthquake in 1995, it suffered a lot of damage and has done a lot less than its counterparts to revive and regenerate its business since this disaster. As a result, there is a deep sense of tradition here. Production has dropped significantly.

Our final visit was Kobe Shushinkan (www.shushinkan.co.jp) (Brand Name is Fukuju), which dated from 1751. Despite not being a big brewery – production about 15,000 koku (15,000 x 0.18 kilo litre = 1.5 million bottles (1.8 litre)), it seems to have done rather well in marketing – it has won prizes in International Sake Challenges and was even served at the Nobel Prize Awards Dinner in 2010. The brewery has even sold out of the sake that won a gold medal in the International Sake Challenge! We took full advantage of our last chance to shop and just about made it to the train!



View from hotel room in Tokyo!

 The evening concluded in Tokyo with a very stylish celebration dinner, specially catered for us, complete with a whole range of different sakes to sample. This concluded our Sake Sommelier Course. We were very lucky with the weather during the 4 days – most days were clear and we even had a brief brush with snow flakes in Kyoto.  In fact the sunny weather was still there on the day I left and from the plane, I got this perfect view of Mount Fuji!

This was the first ever course of this kind organized by the Sake Sommelier Association and I hope this will be the first of many to come so that other keen sake lovers will be able to gain this valuable firsthand experience to learn about sake making directly from toji masters and try it with different food types, using different glassware.  I highly recommend!

Kampai!