Ep 01: Busting Popular Sake Myths and Legends

Welcome to the first episode of Sugidama Podcast, the podcast about Japanese sake, the amazing drink, I am madly in love with, profoundly fascinated by and eager to tell you about!

Sake is a mysterious drink for the Western audience. Many heard but only a few have tried. As any mysterious object, it’s surrounded by myths and legends. Some of them are completely false and others have some truth in them. Before I started my sake journey I also had many misconceptions about it. So I would like to share some of the most common myths and bust them here. Or see if there is any truth in them.

In Japanese “sugidama” means a ball made of cedar twigs and it’s a symbol of a sake brewery. In old times a sugidama was usually hung in front of the brewery at the beginning of the brewing season and the locals knew that when it turned brown, the sake was ready and they could head for the brewery for a nice drink. So every time you listen to my podcast or read my blog, why not to have a sip of sake!

Episode Contents:

• Sake: what's in the name: sake vs. nihonshu
• Origin of sake
• Myth 01: Sake is a spirit
• Myth 02: Sake is rice wine
• Myth 03: Sake is always drunk warm
• Myth 04: Sake is good only with Japanese food
• Myth 05: Premium sake is always better
• Sake of the Episode: Keigetsu Nigori Junmai Daiginjo

Sake mentioned in the episode:
Keigetsu Nigori Junmai Daiginjo
Keigetsu Tosa Brewing Company (in Japanese)
Hedonism Wines

Sugidama Podcast on Podchaser - please review if you don't use Apple Podcasts

Music used:
Wirklich Wichtig (CB 27) by Checkie Brown https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Checkie_Brown_1005/hey/Wirklich_Wichtig_CB_27

Just Arround the World (Kielokaz ID 362) by KieLoKaz
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/KieLoKaz/Free_Ganymed/Just_Arround_the_World_Kielokaz_ID_362

Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Transcript

Busting Popular Sake Myths and Legends 0:00

Hey, everyone, my name is Alex. Welcome to the first episode of Sugidama Podcast, the podcast about Japanese sake, the amazing drink, I am madly in love with, profoundly fascinated by and eager to tell you about!

Sugidama Blog 0:35

Oh, some of you might know me from Sugidama Blog where I write primarily about sake, but also about Japanese food, Japanese restaurants, travel, culture, events and many other things. The blog is a confession of my passion for Japan, the country, which excites me, intrigues me, and constantly calls me to go there. 

I am mesmerised by its huge futuristic cities and by small old towns, sleeping under a mesh of electric cables, I am dreaming about its beautiful Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines with stone gods and saints covered with moss, I love Japanese food and I feel huge respect for Japanese people, who created this great country.

And sake is a quintessential Japanese drink that absorbed the country’s beauty, dedication, hard work and the duality of keeping traditions and constantly innovating. 

In Japanese “sugidama” means a ball made of cedar twigs and it’s a symbol of a sake brewery. In old times a sugidama was usually hung in front of the brewery at the beginning of the brewing season and the locals knew that when it turned brown, the sake was ready and they could head for the brewery for a nice drink. So every time you listen to my podcast or read my blog, why not have a sip of sake!

Mysterious drink 2:07

And in my first episode, I’d like to talk about sake myths. Sake is a mysterious drink for the Western audience. Many heard but only a few have tried. Like any mysterious object, it’s surrounded by myths and legends. Some of them are completely false and others have some truth in them. Before I started my sake journey I also had many misconceptions about it. So I would like to share some of the most common myths and bust them here. Or see if there is any truth in them.

Name of sake 2:44

First, let’s clear out the mystery and confusion about the name. I always knew sake as sake. What else could it be? You can imagine my surprise when I found out that the actual name for the drink in Japan is different: nihonshu. How come? 

The word “sake” in Japanese actually means any alcoholic beverage. I guess it comes from the times when sake was pretty much the only alcoholic drink in the country. Shochu that time was an obscure regional drink, doburoku, which technically is an unrefined sake, was brewed at homes in villages not commercially. There was a word for grape wine, but again, not many people had an opportunity to drink it. 

However, when Japan opened up to the rest of the world in the 19th century, Japanese drinkers got a chance to try wine, beer, whiskey and other foreign drinks. They all fell under the word sake. So in order to distinguish between the wide range of booze that emerged at that time, the sake got its own name: nihonshu, which literally means “Japanese alcoholic drink”. But why sake and nihonshu sound so differently you might wonder. Well, it’s a particularity of the Japanese writing system for you. 

You probably know that the Japanese use Chinese characters, called kanji, which they borrowed from China a thousand years ago. Unlike other alphabets, a single kanji represents a word, concept or phrase rather than a sound. As kanji came from China, they usually have at least two readings: one Chinese and one Japanese. When a kanji is used on its own it usually has Japanese reading, but when a few kanji are used together, they normally use Chinese readings. 

So “sake” is a Japanese reading. The word “nihonshu”, however, consists of two kanji, “Nihon” which means Japan, Japanese and “shu”, which is a Chinese reading of the kanji for sake. That’s why sake and nihonshu sound so different.

What adds even more confusion is another name for sake, seishu, which means “a clear or refined alcoholic beverage”. It is used to distinguish sake from doburoku, unrefined sake. It’s the official and technical name for Japanese sake, used in the government’s documents and written on a sake bottle. 

Another point to mention is that there are certain regulations which you have to abide by to call the drink you produce nihonshu. One of them is that it must be brewed in Japan. So if you drink sake made, say in London by Tom and Lucy from the Kanpai sake brewery in Pelham, you drink sake, not nihonshu. Which does not make it less amazing, if you ask me. In any case, I will refer to sake as sake, not nihonshu, to make our lives easier. 

Origin of sake 5:59

Talking about sake myths you can’t not to talk about the origin of sake, which is also covered in mystery. I spent hours and hours trying to find this pesky info. In Japanese, there are probably much more sources but in English, the information is very scarce. 

While the history of alcoholic drinks in Japan goes back for around 2-3 thousand years, the first actual mentioning of alcohol drinking in Japan comes from a Chinese historic text called the Book of Wei. According to Chinese travellers who visited Japanese islands between the 4th and 6the century of our era, locals used an alcoholic beverage during a funeral ritual. 

Let me quote: “When the chief mourner sheds tears, the rest start singing, dancing and drinking sake”. The Book of Wei also notes that the Japanese liked their booze. However, while we don’t know what kind of alcoholic drink they had that time, it was unlikely anything similar to modern sake. 

Another interesting story of the emergence of alcohol in Japan is about kuchikamizake. If you watched a very good Japanese animation, Your Name, you might remember the method of making alcohol from there. Young maidens were chewing and spitting rice into a vessel to ferment. It’s a very ancient method of making alcoholic drinks as our saliva has got necessary enzymes for that. Probably it was discovered by chance. However, debunking the first myth, kuchikamizake wasn't a predecessor of the modern sake. 

Basically sake in a form close enough to what we drink now emerged when koji mould appeared in Japan. And the first record of using koji in sake brewing goes back to the 8th century when only the emperor and his court could enjoy the drink. I will talk about the history of sake and how it’s made future episodes but now let’s go straight to the myths! 

Myth 01: Sake is a spirit 8:31

One of the main sake myths I hear quite often is that sake is a spirit, like vodka or gin. I myself had the same impression for a long time. There are a couple of reasons for the origin of this myth. First of all, sake is called “rice vodka” in some sources. It was definitely a case for me. I probably read it in a novel about Japan when I was a boy. I guess translators might have confused sake with soju, baijo or even shochu. I definitely haven’t come across the term “rice vodka” referring to sake in English sources for many years but in other languages, you might still find references to it.

However, I think that the main reason for thinking that sake is a spirit or liquor as they say across the pond is its look, usually transparent as vodka or gin. When you look at it in a glass you automatically assume that if it looks like vodka, it should taste like one. Also, sake was usually drunk from small cups like ochoko, which also created the impression that sake is strong alcohol. 

So this is a total myth. First of all, spirits like I don’t know whiskey or grappa, for example, are distilled alcoholic beverages made by distillation. You basically heat up a pre-fermented weak alcoholic mash, the alcohol evaporates, condensates and is captured at a separate vessel. So you go from the strength of beer to the strength of whiskey.

Sake, however, is fermented naturally, usually to 20% ABV or higher and then diluted to 15%-17%, slightly stronger than wine but way weaker than any spirit. If you are asking, why it’s diluted, the simple answer is to make it easier to drink. 

So sake is not a spirit, the myth is busted!

Myth 02: Sake is rice wine 10:34

Another myth or I would say more like a misconception, which is probably related to the previous myth, is the term “rice wine” used for sake even in Japanese sources in English. However, it’s a reference more to the strength of sake rather than a brewing method. The answer to the question, whether sake is wine is a definite “no”.

While both sake and wine are made by fermentation, winemaking is very different from sake brewing, which is closer to the method used to make beer. Still, the brewing method for sake is really unique. So let’s see how sake is different from wine and beer without going into the nitty-gritty of the brewing process, which is a topic of a future episode.

First of all, you might already know that to make alcohol you need sugar and you need yeast, which breaks sugar into alcohol and CO2. Let’s take grapes. They are full of natural sugar. What you need is to press and mash them and leave for a couple of weeks and voila, the wine is ready. Of course, I am heavily oversimplifying, but you’ve got the gist.

However, sake and beer are made from grains, which do not have sugar naturally. But they have starch, which is basically the same thing just slightly different molecules. For plants, starch is easier to store and sugar is easier to consume. 

With beer, the starch is converted into sugar by tricking typically barley grains into believing that it’s spring and they have to grow. So they start working hard and converting starch into sugar to get the energy. It’s called germination. When the process is finished, the yeast is added to the resulted sugary liquid called wort. And you’ve got your beer. Again., I am oversimplifying.

The process is more complex with sake. Germination can’t be used here for a number of reasons. So enters koji. Koji is a sort of domesticated mould, widely used in Asia for fermentation. A lot of foods like miso paste, soy sauce and some others made with koji. Koji penetrates a rice grain and transforms starch into sugar, which used by yeast to make alcohol. However, the amazing thing about sake is that both transformations, starch to sugar and sugar to alcohol are happening simultaneously and the process has a super scientific name, multiple parallel fermentation. Oof.

So next time you hear “rice wine” instead of sake, you know that it’s not true.

Myth 03: Sake is always drunk warm 13:17

It’s a common belief that sake should be drunk hot. If you’ve ever watched any samurai movie, you should remember lords sitting on the raised floors and drinking hot sake from flat cups, called by the way sakazuki. Even when you go to Japanese restaurants here in London, a waiter often asks how you would like your sake: cold or hot. So sake is drunk hot. But not always, and not all sake. As often with Japan, it depends on a number of factors and there are plenty of exceptions. 

The beauty of sake is that majority of it can be drunk at any temperature you like. Really. You can experiment with temperatures and it’s fun. But it also depends on the type of sake and some other factors. Basically, there is a category of sake you normally should drink chilled: ginjo style sake. So if you see ginjo or daiginjo in the name or on the bottle don’t drink it hot. Chill it a bit, but not too cold. The rule of thumb, white wine cold or a bit warmer. If you want more guidance, look for brewer’s notes, they usually indicate the recommended temperature range. However, as I said you can experiment with the temperature yourself. 

So what is ginjo? It’s basically a super premium sake. There are two subcategories in this style, ginjo and even more premium daiginjo. Ginjo sake is generally more refined and more expensive as it requires more rice, more work and higher brewer’s skills to produce. We will talk more about it in the episodes about sake types and styles. The reason why you don’t want to warm up ginjo sake is that it has a very delicate flavour profile so if you warm it up, you will lose it. Though I heard that the president of one very prominent brewery which makes only ginjo sake drinks it hot. So again, experiment!

With other sake styles, it depends on a particular sake flavour and taste profile and circumstances. There are dry, crisp and light sake, which usually better chilled and there are more savoury full-bodied sake, which might be great at room temperature or hot. Also on a cold winter evening, you might want a cup of hot sake to warm you up, but on a hot summer day, you will probably have a glass of nicely chilled sake.

When I get a new sake, I usually put it in a fridge for some time before drinking. So when I open it, it’s pretty cold, probably colder than it should be actually. But I always pour it in a sake serving flask called tokkuri, which takes probably, say 1/3 – 1/4 of the bottle and put the bottle back to the fridge.

So when I start drinking the sake, it’s well chilled. However, as you drink it gradually becomes warmer and warmer. At some point you might say, oh, it’s perfect. Or it’s too warm, I should go a few degrees back. As you have the rest of the sake in the fridge you can always control the temperature as you like.

One of the reasons to experiment is that different people might prefer to drink the same sake at different temperatures. I have a friend, who actually likes sake colder than I do. But he is OK to give it a try at a slightly warmer temperature. 

So hot sake is not a myth but it depends.

Myth 04: Sake is good only with Japanese food 17:03

The next myth I would like to tackle is that sake is good only with Japanese food. Seriously? First of all, you don’t always have French food with French wine or Italian food with Italian wine. Actually, you might not even have a “national cuisine” meal. What about a Thai starter and a British main with a German side dish? Why not? What kind of drink you will have with that?

To be fair, as many national drinks, sake was developed through the centuries to go well with Japanese cuisine. It complements Japanese dishes perfectly. I remember when I first tried sake in Japan I had this distinctive feeling of a perfect marriage between the food and the drink. 

And historically, Japanese food used to be quite delicate if not plain and mild and not very acidic taste of sake was a great fit. But both Japanese cuisine and sake have changed dramatically in the last couple of centuries. The food has become much more diverse while sake has become drier and more refined. For example, the modern ginjo style we’ve just talked about emerged only in the 1970s, 50 years ago. So of course that link between sake and Japanese food has weakened with time. 

Nowadays, the mild and low acidity profile of sake makes it easy to pair with a wide variety of food. Any sake is great with cheese because both are naturally rich in umami, this mysterious fifth taste, which makes steak or ripe tomatoes so delicious. Junmai sake, which even rich er in umami, will perfectly complement risotto, beef bourguignon and any other hearty food. While lighter ginjo sake is great with lighter food: oysters, lightly grilled fish, steamed chicken, veggies.

I once had the sake and Indian curry night and discovered that sweeter and lighter sake was very nice with hot dishes like jalfrezi, while drier and more savoury sake was great with less spicy dishes like korma. 

So sake is a very cool drink to experiment with and will go with any meal. Just buy sake and try it with your favourite food and you will see it for yourself. You just need to select it properly like any wine for example. I will do an episode on sake and food pairing but in the meantime drop me a line if you need any advice! 

So please think about sake even if you are having something non-Japanese. 

Myth 05: Premium sake is always better 19:35

The final myth I would like to talk about is that more premium sake is always better. I have to say straight away, it’s not true. While sake is usually fairly priced and I mean that if you pay more you will usually get more premium sake, a premium sake not necessarily better. I have personally drunk a few a bit boring Junmai Ginjo and Junmai Daiginjo and many terrific honjozo or junmai sake for example. 

First, the quality of sake depends not only on its grade but also on the skill of the sake master brewer, who made it. Secondly, there are occasions you would like to drink premium sake like daiginjo, but in other cases, you might want to have less premium junmai or honjozo sake. However, I have to say that for a newcomer to the world of sake, the ginjo style is a great way to start the journey. 

However, it creates this myth. I actually believed that“premium sake is always better” for a while. My proper introduction to sake happened at the International Wine Challenge tasting of award-winning sake. As it was a trophy event, so most of the presented sake were premium and super-premium. I liked many of them and decided that anything else was not worth my attention. For a few months after the event, whenever I was buying or ordering sake, I only asked for junmai ginjo or daiginjo. 

However, with more sake I tried, my attitude gradually started to change. First, I got curious about other types of sake. Then there were books about sake I was reading: John Gauntner, Philip Harper, some others. They all were talking about all types of sake including junmai, honjozo and futsushu. 

My personal breakthrough came when I did my sake specialist course called International Kikisake-shi, where I tried a very wide range of sake and realised that yes, there are wonderful sake in all grades, categories and styles. And I stopped being a “ginjo snob” using John Gauntner’s expression.

So please don’t be put off by lack of ginjo or daiginjo in the name of the sake, try it and decide for yourself whether you like it or not.

Sake of Episode 22:00

At the end of each episode, I would like to tell you about one sake I have recently tried and found particularly interesting.

So today it’s Keigetsu Nigori Junmai Daiginjo from Tosa Brewery. Keigetsu sake is very well presented outside Japan and particularly in London. It’s one of my favourite breweries.

The brewery was established in 1877 in Kochi prefecture on Shikoku Island. It's south of Japan and the area is the former Tosa domain, which played a crucial role in Meiji Restoration, the events that opened up Japan and turned it into a modern country.

Keigetsu is a brand name of the sake and it means “The Moon at “Kei” shore” referring to the beautiful scenery of the prefecture’s coastline, its beaches with tall pine trees, blue skies and aquamarine sea. For me, it sounds very romantic. 

The word “nigori” means cloudy sake where some of the rice particles were left after the pressing to create a smooth creamy texture. And Junmai Daiginjo is the highest grade of sake made purely from rice and water using koji mould and yeast.

Keigetsu Nigori is a very aromatic sake. You will notice straight away sweet apple, melon, lychee and other tropical flavours. It’s a relatively sweet sake as many nigori sake and has a pleasant creamy texture and long smooth finish. When I tried it for the first time, I tasted a bit of lemon cheesecake which had a nice interplay with sharp alcohol notes. 

Keigetsu Nigori is a very refreshing and friendly sake. It goes amazingly well with sashimi, steamed or grilled fish and any other light dishes. But it’s also great on its own.

Ending 23:51

So that’s it for today. I’ll be back with more episodes. In the meantime, if you never tried sake, go and… oh, don’t, don’t go, it’s a coronavirus lockdown at the moment. But yeah, order sake online, try it and send me an email or leave a comment about your experience. If you can’t find Keigetsu Nigori, try a different Keigetsu sake, they all are great, or any nigori sake. Go to Sugidama Blog and see in the Tasting Notes section if there is a sake that looks interesting to you, buy it and try!

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Thanks a lot for listening!

Kampai!