Episode 23: Sake Focus: Ginjo, Luxury in a Glass

Greeting (0:00)

Hey, everyone! Welcome to episode 23 of Sugidama Podcast, the podcast about Japanese sake, the drink which could be as luxurious as you can imagine and the code word for that is ginjo.

But before we talk about it, let me tell you about our sponsor, London Sake, who have one of the widest selections of premium and craft sake available online today. You can choose from over 100 sake from 25 breweries, and they will deliver across the UK and many European markets. And if you don’t know what sake to choose you can use simple online tasting notes together with very sensible and affordable food pairings to help you decide. What’s more, you can get a 10% discount by just using the code: SUGIDAMA (all caps) during checkout. London Sake: making sake simple.”

My name is Alex and I live in London. I am a certified sake specialist, sake judge, sake educator and sake advocate. Besides this podcast, I have Sugidama Blog where I write about all things sake, publish tasting notes, overviews, and information about sake events happening in London.

And recently I have published a post about 5 sake to drink this summer including a lot of very good sake you either can enjoy in hot weather or with summer seasonal food or both. I did a similar review a couple of years ago and most of the recommendations from that post still stand. So you can read both and decide what you would like to drink in summer 2021, probably watching the Olympics.

Also, I have an exciting announcement. The next episode is the last in the season. And it will be released during the Tokyo Olympics. So I wanted to make it special and invited the sponsor of Sugidama Podcast, the owner of London Sake, Andy Travers to talk about his sake story, various sake, and the Olympics. We plan to record the episode on the day the Olympics opens and release it on the 5th of August. Or probably I will move it one week forward if I manage to edit it earlier.

What is ginjo and its history (4:43)

So today I would like to talk about ginjo style of sake. There are a lot of misconceptions about it. Quite often people look at it as just premium sake with a high polishing ratio. But it's much more in it. Yes, ginjo style requires the polishing ratio of at least 60% in ginjo and 50% in daiginjo. But the polishing ratio is only one thing of many that define the ginjo sake style.

First of all, let's look at the name and history of ginjo. The name comes from two Chinese characters and could be translated as "crafted or carefully brewing". The name appeared in the 1930s referring to the fruity aroma of sake made of highly polished rice. You might remember from previous episodes that vertical rice polishing machines just emerged around that time allowing to increase the polishing ratio from the usual 80-90% when only 10-20% of a rice grain were polished off to 60-70% and beyond.

So the aroma was called ginjoka, where "ka" stands for "aroma" or "fragrance". It’s usually quite fruity with notes of melon, banana, apple, strawberry and other fruits and berries. Quite often people refer to some ginjo sake as “fruit bombs” because you can smell the beautiful aroma as soon as someone opens a bottle across the table. However, the aroma is not the only attribute of ginjo-shu. (“Shu” is a different reading of the character for “sake”, you remember, right?) Ginjo style means that the sake is luxurious and smooth, complex and light, and easy to drink. Again, as with everything in sake, it might vary. Some ginjo are less complex or a bit heavier but in general, those attributes stand.

For many years after the emergence of vertical polishing machines, your typical milling ratio remained around 70% for premium sake and below for ungraded. Anything beyond 70% was more like competition sake made for various completions to show the brewery's and toji's skills and capabilities. However, gradually, this competition sake made its way to consumers. One of the first commercially available ginjo style sake was Dewazakura Oka in 1980 if I am not mistaken. It was affordable premium sake with a milling ratio of 60% and it introduced the term "ginjo" to consumers as it used to be a technical term used by sake professionals in the industry.

Dewazakura Oka Ginjo became an instant hit with sake drinkers, encouraging other breweries to release their competition for the masses. At the end of the 1980s, the new sake classification system came into existence, which defined the names and milling ratios for "tokutei meisho shu", special designation sake as it was named.

Many people, myself included, started their sake journey after trying a ginjo-style sake, which became an aha moment for them. 

How ginjo sake brewing is different from less polished sake (6:03)

So what makes ginjo sake so nice and refined. The milling ratio is of course a very important factor. If you look at a sake rice grain, it has a large white core surrounded by a semitransparent outer layer. And I'm talking about the rice where the brown shell called bran has been removed already. So the white core called in Japanese shinpaku, which is just a direct translation, consists mainly of starch, which we need for making alcohol. The semitransparent bit includes proteins, fats, amino acids, and minerals, which give sake its character and roughness and a lot of unwanted aromas and flavours. So when the rice is polished, we get rid of most of them leaving the starch part mostly intact. The purer the starch part, the more refined the resulting sake will be. But of course, it will lose some of its character.

However, as I said, ginjo style is defined not only by milling ratio. There are three big groups of factors, which make the prized ginjo sake we enjoy. The first group is brewer's skills, the second is the technique and the third one is ingredients. And the order doesn’t reflect the importance of which group. They are equally important.

Skills, process, and ingredients (7:29)

Let’s look at the brewer’s skills and the brewing process itself. Think about the brewing process. After the sake rice is polished and cooled down, it's soaked and streamed. If you make sake from not very highly polished rice, you can soak it for a few hours or even overnight, and it will be fine. The protein/fats layer will protect the shinpaku from water and will slow down the soaking process. 

However, if you use highly polished rice, the soaking happens much much faster. Sometimes, it might take 20-40 only seconds. And you don’t want to oversoak the rice as it will affect how the rice is cooked, koji making and the moromi. So as a toji you have to know exactly how long in terms of seconds you need to soak the rice. And think about a medium-size brewery. You have to achieve consistency across all your batches of sake, and we are talking about tonnes of rice during the brewing season. 

Same with shubo or sake starter, which is also called moto. The polished rice is much more delicate and also more desirable for any unwanted bacteria, which live in the air. So you need to be especially careful and develop the starter at a lower temperature, which makes the process longer.

Similar to the starter, the actual brewing also happens at a lower temperature. You have to check your moromi constantly to make sure it is fermenting in the right way. Again, due to the highly polished rice, it’s more susceptible to the invasion of unfriendly microorganisms.

When the sake is ready to be pressed, it also has to be done much more carefully compared to a less polished brew. Ginjo sake is delicate and you don’t want to spoil it by exposing it to too much oxygen, bacteria, light etc. So quite often ginjo sake is pressed in a cold environment using more delicate techniques like a traditional fune machine or fukuro-tsuri, when the bags with moromi are suspended on the strings and sake drips into a big bottle.

Same with other stages of the brewing process, like racking, filtering, pasteurisation, cold storage. Pasteurisation is particularly important as you don’t want to damage the delicate aromas and flavours of ginjo with too much heat. So all stages have to be done much more carefully and often take a longer time. I have to note that these techniques now and methods are used in normal junmai sake: slow cold fermentation, delicate pressing and so on, which shifted junmai sake closer to ginjo in terms of refinement.

Ginjo sake is normally brewed using high-grade sake rice. You need a higher proportion of starch in your polished rice. So it’s important to have a bigger shinpaku, the starchy core. The rice also should be without cracks and not chipped. It’s all affect the texture, the aroma and the flavour of ginjo sake. You need a special yeast, which actually produces this fruity or flowery aromas, as most of the aroma comes from the yeast, not rice. The water is very important in sake brewing but especially in ginjo. So yes, when the brewery is making ginjo, they need to choose the ingredients very carefully and know how to deal with them to achieve the level of ginjo style.

Mid sponsor’s message (11:32)

OK, before we talk about types of ginjo sake, how it tastes, should be stored and paired with food, let me remind you about London Sake, our sponsor and their huge selection of curated sake sets, which provide a great opportunity to explore various styles and types of sake. Have a look but don’t forget about the magic word, SUGIDAMA (all caps) to get your 10% discount.

Grades and types of ginjo sake (11:59)

Let’s now talk about grades and types of ginjo sake. Under the current classification system, there are four grades or styles of ginjo: two with added alcohol and two without. Until now in this episode, I used the word “ginjo” as a style of sake. Now I am going to use it in the reference to the classification system. 

So ginjo sake under that system is defined as sake made from the rice polished to at least 60% (40% off) and with a bit of alcohol added at the end of the fermentation process before pressing. Daiginjo is made from the rice polished to at least 50% with the addition of alcohol as well. On the other side we have junmai ginjo and junmai daiginjo. The polishing ratios are the same as in ginjo and daiginjo respectively, 60% and 50%, but no alcohol is added at any point.

So with ginjo/junmai ginjo, it’s simple: the milling ratio could be between 60% and 50%. It’s more interesting with daiginjo/junmai daiginjo. For many years breweries were in the game to overdo each other in terms of polishing ratio. So it was going lower and lower: 50%, 45%, 40%, 35%. Here most of the breweries stopped. However, some ventured even further.

I told you a story about Dassai 23, the junmai ginjo sake made from rice polished to 23%. The president wanted 25%, the lowest ratio at that time, but another brewery did 24%. So he went to 23%. Tatenokawa 8 is made from rice polished to 8% with 92% of the grain polished off. But then we have even more extreme ratios. 1% and finally 0%. Well, as I understand it’s to do with rounding. If you have a polishing ratio of 0.4%, you can round it down to zero. 

Another interesting thing is the polishing technique. Daishichi Brewery, for example, uses the so-called super-flat rice polishing method, when you polish the sides of a rice grain until you reach shinpaku, leaving the grain flat. As the milling ratio is calculated on the weight basis, not the volume, with this super-flat method you can achieve the same result as the normal method, but with a higher ratio. So if you want to match a traditional method polishing ratio of 51%, you only have to polish the grain to 70% using the super-flat polishing technique. I will put a link in the show notes to the brewery’s website, where this technique is explained in detail.

In terms of the type of sake, any type can be ginjo style. So you can have namazake junmai daiginjo, nigori ginjo, daiginjo genshu, ginjo koshu. Anything. 

When ginjo is not ginjo but tokubetsu (15:19)

Another interesting point is when ginjo is not called ginjo. For example, take a very popular Nanbu Bijin Tokubetsu Junmai sake. It’s polished to 55%, so it technically should be called ginjo. However, the brewery decided to call it tokubetsu junmai. There are a number of reasons, breweries do it. One reason is a general style of sake. If it’s not fruity, the brewery might want to avoid confusion and call it tokubetsu junmai or tokubetsu honjozo depending on whether alcohol has been added.

Or for example, the brewery makes too many different ginjo sake but would like to differentiate them. So one of the ginjo might be called tokubetsu junmai, to avoid sales cannibalisation.

How to drink ginjo: temperature, food etc. (16:16)

So are there any rules on how to drink ginjo style sake? Honestly, none. Though there are some conventions, which are actually going away. One great thing about ginjo is it’s easier to drink on its own. Sake is generally drunk with food. And Japanese people always eat when they drink. But as ginjo sake is fruity and light, it’s ok to have without any food or with just some nibbles. And it’s very enjoyable. 

In terms of food, given the delicate nature of ginjo sake, you might prefer to drink it with light food. Seafood is great. Either sashimi or lightly grilled or steamed. Veggies and salads are great pairings for ginjo sake. Interestingly, tempura is a very good paring especially with drier style ginjo sake as it removes the oiliness of deep-fried vegetables and seafood. Cheese is amazing with any sake but especially with ginjo as a nibble. Light meats and chicken are also pretty good. But again, it all depends on a particular sake. Some daiginjo sake are great with steak.

In terms of temperature, the general advice is to have ginjo sake, especially daiginjo and junmai daiginjo, chilled. Just a bit below white wine usual serving temperature. However, there is more and more evidence that ginjo sake is great warmed up. I was listening to Sake on Air episode on kanzake, warm sake, and one of the sake educators mentioned that before, when they were talking about how to drink ginjo, they offered the students chilled and warmed up ginjo and it was clear that chilled is better. 

But now very often the students say, hey, the warm ginjo is different from chilled but not necessary in a bad way. Kokuryu brewery, for example, made ginjo sake especially for drinking warm. But again, if you have ginjo style sake, try it chilled first and then you can experiment with it.

Sake of episode (18:30)

Ok, today I would like to feature Kanpai London Kaze Junmai Ginjo as a sake of the episode. It’s a special edition sake made here in London by Kanpai London Brewery. I have already featured their beautiful Taru sake. This time a bit of luxury: junmai ginjo. Kaze means wind in Japanese and gosh, this sake is so light! Made from Yamada Nishiki rice polished to 60%, it has SMV, sake metre value, of -1, indicating medium dryness. There's no acidity number, but my guess is it might be higher than 1.5. 

So Kanpai Kaze is a perfect summer sake. It's light, alcohol content is not too high, 15%, it has a very fresh and bright fruity aroma with prominent cantaloupe notes. It's medium-dry with higher acidity compared to sake imported from Japan.

In a way, it's quite close to white wine which probably appeals to Western drinkers, who are used to wine. But Kaze has its own unique character. 

The sake is very versatile. I had it with fish and duck and in both cases it was superb. But it's very enjoyable to sip on its own. It's terrific chilled, but if you try it warmer, just slightly below room temperature, it becomes more mellow and less acidic and opens up a bit.

Ending (20:04)

That’s it for today. I’ll be back with more episodes. In the meantime, buy a bottle of ginjo sake and try. There is plenty of ginjo, junmai ginjo, daiginjo and junmai daiginjo sake available everywhere including the London Sake website where you can get a 10% discount by entering SUGIDAMA all in caps at the checkout. And you can buy Kanpai Kaze Junmai Ginjo directly from the brewery’s website.

If you have any questions or suggestions about any sake topic, just drop me a line. As I have already mentioned I started thinking about season 3 already and any feedback would be great. My email address is alex@sugidama.co.uk or you can tag me on Instagram or Twitter @sugidamablog in one word.

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Thanks a lot for listening!

Kampai!