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A Sake Primer
Pairing Sake with Food

A Sake Primer

By Ella Lawrence

For many Americans, an introduction to sake came while dining at a sushi restaurant. A ceramic pitcher of hot, high-alcohol sake arrived, it washed down the sashimi and the nigiri in little cups, and we thought that all sake was the same. That’s a little like drinking a glass of white zinfandel straight from a box and thinking that all wines are pink and sweet.

Sake (which is technically a beer, because it’s brewed and is derived from a grain), is often compared to wine because of its alcohol content (higher than a beer at around 16-20%) and because it works so well paired with food.

Sake’s flavor elements come from simple ingredients and a complicated process. The biggest factors that influence the finished product are water, rice, and yeast; other factors that have a hand in the sake’s flavor are weather and geography.

Sake is produced by fermenting rice. First, the rice is polished to remove the exterior of the rice grain (where protein and oil live), and the “pure core” of the rice is fermented. The more rice is polished away, the more high-quality the finished sake will be.

The rice is then soaked and washed, then cooked and fermented by adding koji and yeast (which change the starch into sugar, and then the sugar into alcohol) for several weeks. Koji is a mold that converts the rice’s starch into a simple sugar, which feeds one of many varieties of sake yeast to begin fermentation. The fermentation is often slowed by lowering the temperature; either by refrigeration or in snowy winter climates.

After the rice ferments, it is pressed, and the liquids separate from the solids. Some sake has distilled alcohol added: this sake is called honjozo-shu, and is the cheap warm sake that many Westerners remember as their introduction to sake. After filtration, the remaining lees are removed (except in the case of nigori, where it is left in the sake to add a sweet taste and a creamy texture), and the sake is filtered and pasteurized (in most cases). Then, the sake rests and is diluted with water to lower the alcohol content and is bottled and drunk.

There are several different classifications of sake, with the most important being:

Junmai-shu. This is "pure rice sake," made from only rice, water and koji, with no other additions.

Ginjo-shu is made from rice polished to 60% or less of its original weight. Sake made from rice polished to 50% or lower is called daiginjo-shu.

The term junmai (“pure rice sake”) can be added to ginjo or daiginjo, resulting in junmai ginjo and junmai daiginjo.

Sake can be served chilled, at room temperature, or heated, depending on the preference of the drinker, the quality of the sake, and the season. Hot sake is usually drunk in the winter, and high-grade sake like junmai daiginjo and junmai ginjo are not drunk this way, because their delicate flavors and aromas will be lost through heating. Sake is often heated to hide the flavor of low-quality sake.

Aside from being served straight, sake can be used as a mixer for cocktails, like a “saketini” or a “sake bomb.”

Sake is best consumed within 2 or 3 hours after opening the bottle. It can be stored (in the refrigerator), although it is generally recommended to finish the sake within 2 days.

Recently, at a sake seminar presented by the Japan Sake Brewers Association and the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), Haruo Matsuzaki spoke to an assembled group of dozens of chefs, sommeliers, and others working in the San Francisco restaurant industry about the basics of understanding sake.

First, Matsuzaki spoke about rice, of which there are over fifty types used for making sake. “Sake making rice has a different type of rice available, just like wines,” he said through an interpreter. “There’s also eating rice, regular rice, available to make sake too. [Sake] is defined by the kind of rice that is used. There’s a big difference when the sake is made by ‘sake’ rice or ‘eating’ rice.”

Matsuzaki explained that sake made from ‘sake’ rice is richer, with a more complex taste, versus sake made from an ‘eating’ rice that has a simpler taste and a lighter body.

Sake rice (called sakamai) is usually at least a quarter larger than regular, ‘eating’ rice, and is valued for its pure core, which has a high concentration of the white starch that is used for fermentation. Sake brewers polish each grain of sake rice to expose the “white heart” and remove the fats and proteins that give bad flavors to sake in the outer layer.

Most sake rice is polished 30 percent (which means that 70 percent of the grain remains). Ginjo sake’s rice is polished 40 percent (60 percent of each grain is left over), and daiginjo sake is produced from rice polished 50 percent (half of the rice’s grain is left to ferment).

Another crucial factor in determining the taste and quality of sake is the water used to make it.

Matsuzaki said, “They use a lot of water in the sake-making process. That is one of the biggest differences between winemaking and sake-making.” Matsuzaki went on to explain that the water (of which 3-4 times as much is used in the sake-making process as in the winemaking process) has a big influence on both the mouth-feel and the taste of sake. Minerals like kalium “make [a] better fermentation,” he said, “much richer and with more structure than with water that does not have a lot of minerals in it. The fermentation slows down with low-mineral water, which results in a gentler, softer sake style.”

Matsuzaki went on to say that the northern area of Nada, near Osaka, is well-known for its sake-making because of its high-mineral waters. “Depending on what type of sake should be made, they will use different kind of waters,” he said.

In Japan, the most historic sake breweries are built around well-known water sources like the one at Nada that Mr. Matsuzaki spoke of. In Kyoto, the softer water there produces a softer sake; harder water produces a more concentrated, bigger, bolder sake.

In addition to the regional characteristics of sake influenced by the water source, weather also plays a large role in how the finished sake tastes. The northern part of Japan is colder, versus the warmer southern part. Matsuzaki explained, “Hako is a yeast, and how the yeast is [activated] is [determined] by the weather temperatures.”

In the colder northern climates, the slow fermentation produces a “softer, sensitive sake,” because the yeast is slow to activate there. South of Tokyo, south of Osaka, the temperatures are warmer. “So a richer style of sake is made in the southern part of Japan,” Matsuzaki said. Usually sake is made in the winter, where the cold temperatures slow the fermentation down, producing a gentler style of sake. In warmer areas of southern Japan where the yeast is activated more quickly, a richer type of sake is produced.

Not only does the weather play a factor in the location of the sake breweries, but geography is also important to the sake-making process. While Japan is surrounded on all sides by ocean, the sakes made at a lower elevation differ greatly from sakes made higher up in Japan’s mountains.

Matsuzaki said, “The ocean side, they have [great] weather. All kinds of foods are available, [like] fresh seafood, fresh vegetables. The ocean side has an abundance of edibles.” Sake made at the ocean has a very simple style, to pair with the simple, fresh food that makes up the cuisine. “It’s a little more dry style of sake. Miyagi, Nigata, Sizopra and Akrutsch are making dry style sake,” Matsuzaki said.

Up in Japan’s mountains, “they don’t get a lot of seafood or fruit so they will tend to make the richer-style sakes, Matsuzaki said. “The mountain side doesn’t have an abundance of food. They use a lot of salt, sugar, and seasoning. A much richer style of food, and the sake there is the same way.” Although modern transportation has ensured that the fresh fish and vegetables always available at Japan’s ports are easily brought to the mountains, these regions maintain the history of making a rich, bold style of sake that they have for hundreds of years.

The delicate flavors in high-quality ginjo or daiginjo can present a challenge to a Western palate that is used to big, bold flavors. But pay close attention, and the flavors and aromas will begin to present themselves with as much nuance as a fine white Burgundy. Mr. Matsuzaki explained the basics of sake pairing to his assembled audience, “Similar to wine tasting, you will pair a lighter style sake with lighter style of food. The same thing goes for a richer style. A more complex sake will be [drunk] with a complex food.” Matsuzaki recommends drinking young sake at a cool temperature, while a richer-style sake may be drunk warm.

And an important thing to remember is that sake does not always have to be drunk with Japanese food. In fact, all of the speakers and brewers interviewed at the San Francisco Sake Tasting Seminar agreed that they “would like people to experience the joy and knowledge of sake not only with Japanese food, but with their own food so they can drink it in their everyday lives.”

Patricia Unterman, chef and co-owner of the Hayes Street Grill, agrees. “The range of flavors and feeling and smell out of the simplest ingredients such as rice and water is absolutely incredible,” she says.

Although artisan sake remains a niche product in the USA, it had the strongest sales growth of any wine type in 2007* (*from just-drinks.com). Americans’ growing interest in exotic foods speaks to the potential growth of premium sakes in the USA. In Argentina, South Africa, and Brazil (which has the largest population of Japanese people outside of Japan, with over 1 million in Sao Paolo alone) where Japanese restaurants account for more than half of full-service restaurants, artisan sake also has a promising future.

“Sake has come to the fore in the last eight years or so, and artisan sake is a relatively new phenomenon,” Unterman says. “Once people begin to taste it, they want more.”

 

Pairing Sake with Food

By Ella Lawrence

The American palate is one that appreciates strong flavors. Powerful seasonings, chilis, and high-tannin wines are many things that we enjoy. “If you think about the way that we taste, often in America you think of a sledgehammer and a chainsaw,” says Bruce Hill, executive chef/partner of Bix restaurant in San Francisco and Pico restaurant in Larkspur. To properly taste sake and pair it with food, “You have to slow yourself down to understand it correctly. It takes a refined palate,” he says.

Hill, who first visited Japan in 1999, ran his menu at the restaurant in the Westin Hotel in Osaka as a promotion for San Francisco during the 50-years-of-sister-city celebration there. Hill had “been doing fusion for a while, [like] Chinese and Thai,” he said at a sake tasting at the Califonia Culinary Academy in San Francisco, but really learned how to focus on what pairs well with sake after spending those two weeks cooking in Japan.

When pairing sake with Western food, Hill says “The first thing I think of is the sake itself. We can adapt the seasoning of our food but you can’t change the flavors of sake.”

Hill is very focused on the flavors of California, and what’s local and seasonal. When he plans a menu to pair with sake, he starts with delicate ingredients, moving onto bolder and more robust flavors to pair with a bolder sake (made from rice that is less polished). A bigger sake should “pair with richer foods, like fish that has a higher oil content,” he explains.

Hill recently tried a very delicate and floral sake: Divine Droplets. To create a dish to pair with this sake, he “started playing around with asparagus,” he says. Hill shaved raw asparagus and then added blood orange and fennel, finishing the dish with torn mint. “I try to start with the simplest combination first,” he says, and with simplicity he keeps from overpowering the delicate flavors and aromas of sake. “The best combinations of food and liquid taste better together than they do separately,” he says.

Hill likens his methods of pairing food with sake to a science project, as he will change only one component of each dish at a time, while keeping all of the flavors very delicate. He also avoids using olive oil when pairing food with sake. “Olive oil and sake tend to fight,” the chef laughs. And these sakes “whisper,” he says. “They don’t scream.”

Yoshi Tome, the CEO of Sushi Ran (one of the top Japanese restaurants in the USA), could be considered one of the pioneers of sake education in the USA. Originally from Okinawa, Tome has made it his mission to educate his customers about the rice-based brewed beverage. “People in America know hot sake but that’s a bad way to come to understand sake,” he says.

Most of the sake sold in the USA is cheap sake, a drink that Tome compares to jug wine. With its high alcohol content and its yeasty taste, this “honjozo” is the wrong sake to introduce a new product to the American palate, Tome says. While there’s “nothing wrong with that sake,” Tome believes that people are looking more for a “texture and a taste they can identify.”

Many restaurants serve nigori sake, which is popular with ‘sake beginners’ because it’s sweet and creamy, with a nice texture and a high alcohol content. Nigori sake opens the door for people to begin enjoying many different kinds of sake.

“People say, ‘Wow! What is this? Coconut milk?’” says Tome. After an introduction to different kinds of sake, beginning with nigori sake, consumers are much more likely to move onto drinking the higher quality daiginjo sakes, and then begin to understand junmai-shu, which is the type of sake made in a much bolder and more complex style. It’s “not as vibrant [as nigori sake], but it has a brilliant nose and nice dryness,” Tome says. He likens the differences between nigori sake and daiginjo sake to the differences between a big, buttery, California chardonnay and a leaner, more mineral-driven European white wine. “Some people like a fragrant, rich Chardonnay, but with more experience they will have a more European palate: less oak, high acidity,” he explains.

Asking his customers if they tend to prefer a Sauvignon Blanc over a Chardonnay, Tome is able to choose a sake from his extensive list to pair with their dinners. An added benefit of choosing wine over sake with dinner?

“No hangover!” Tome says. “No headache in the morning! Drink sake tonight, be happy!” he laughs. “And tomorrow morning . . . Still happy!”

sake’s lack of tannins and sulfites, which many people are allergic to, leave the drinker clearer-headed after a night of indulging. Particularly daiginjo, which only uses the pure core of the rice to brew the sake, leaves the drinker feeling better than might be expected the next morning.

“The outside [of the] rice has a bunch of minerals and protein. That protein gives headaches,” Tome says.

While sake is technically measured on a “sake meter,” which measures the alcohol’s sweetness levels using a plus or minus system, Tome does not use this system in his restaurant because it’s less approachable to Americans, who are used to thinking of sake in terms of wine (even though technically, sake is a beer because it’s brewed from a grain). Pairing sake with food is done on the same scale as pairing wine with food. “Lighter [taste] with lighter and heavier with heavier [taste],” says Tome.

In France, sake is even being paired with desserts. Famed chocolatier Jean-Paul Hevin loves a sake called Kawasemi no Tabi (“Le Martin Pecheur” in French) so much that he makes a chocolate using that sake’s lees (the leftover solids from the fermentation process that gives nigori sake its sweet taste and creamy texture). Kawasemi no Tabi, made by the Koshino Hana Shuzo brewery in Niigata, makes the sweet sake in the style of a dessert wine especially for Western palates.

Little by little, sake is becoming better-known to the Western palate, especially in San Francisco, where food and drink trends for the country are often born.

For Jessica Furui, sake sommelier at Ozumo in SF and Oakland, sake was a personal obsession that began ten years ago. “I love sake,” she says. Like many Westerners, Furui (whose husband is a Japanese), “drank cheap hot sake, and then the first time I drank junmai daiginjo, I was like whoaaa!”
Furui, who was managing a sushi bar at the time, began to study sake on her own, and the more she learned, the more fascinated she became. “It’s kind of like the rabbit hole [from Alice in Wonderland], it just kept going and going,” she said.

And with the help of sake programs like the one she runs at Ozumo, others are following in her footsteps. When asked about the recent surge in sake education in San Francisco, she says, “We can only go upwards from here. That’s a huge part of the program I do at Ozumo: not just tasting sake but education about the brewers, the regions, and why sake tastes the way it does.”

Furui believes that even more interest in sake is going to come from the wine industry; with vintners and sommeliers becoming more interested in learning about sake.
“A good portion of the people who are here today [at the sake seminar and tasting] are from the wine business, and they need to learn about sake,” she says.

“[Interest in sake] is not going to go away. It’s only going to get bigger, which is great because we need to support business for the brewers in Japan,” she concludes.
Ty Mahler, executive chef at Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion restaurant in San Francisco, is one of the many chefs that attended the sake tasting organized by the Japan sake Brewers Association and the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco.

“Even if you drink sake every day and learn little tidbits here and there, it’s rare that you get to go to an event like this and listen to people of this caliber talk about sake through and through,” he says.

And although Roy’s restaurant still sells more California wine than sake, sake has always been a personal love of owner Roy Yamaguchi. In fact, “Roy makes his own sake in Sonoma,” Mahler says. Yamaguchi wanted to “bring that part of Japan to Western culture,” Mahler says, “to the people who eat the butter sauces, and the dairy, and to make it pair really well.”

Like at Ozumo, sake education plays a large role at Roy’s. Mahler hopes that eventually customers won’t overlook the sake menu and go straight to the wine. Why does this happen?

“Wine country is at our back door!” Mahler says. Being “so close to the wine country and so far from Japan” plays a large role in why diners often choose a bottle of wine over a bottle of sake, but also because of the lack of education that surrounds sake. Once sake becomes less mysterious, Mahler believes, consumers will drink sake with all kinds of food, not just Japanese food.

Jon Von, a sommelier at Ame restaurant, says that a lot of consumers are trying out sake. “A lot is experimental,” he says, but a lot of people are coming to his restaurant already knowing about sake.

“Stephen Tanzer has written a few sake reviews, so a lot of people that follow his writing are asking for sakes that he likes by name.”

At Ame, the sakes on the list are “very much geared toward the food we serve,” says Von. The sake selection at Ame is extensive, and during this time of the year, Von is especially excited about namazake, which are unpasteurized and undiluted. “They’re a lot richer, with a lot more texture going on,” he says. The seasonal sakes only go through one, or no, pasteurizing process, whereas other sakes go through one or two pasteurizing processes to stabilize the sake. Namazake has “More smells and flavor, and more intensity,” Von says. The seasonal sakes are released in spring and summer and have a shorter shelf-life than pasteurized sakes. Right now, Ame has three on their list.

With so many renowned chefs in attendance at this sake seminar and tasting, it certainly seems to be the beginning of a trend: pairing sake with non-Japanese food. For the non-chef, pairing sake with a menu might seem intimidating, but keep in mind what chef Bruce Hill had to say:

“You’re the best judge of what you taste. You have to have your own conviction, and your own passion, about what you think tastes good together.” Kampai!