Drinking Japan. Chris Bunting
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Yet, when pioneering makers tried to resurrect koshu making in the 1970 and 1980s, they were sometimes met with outright hostility. The traditions of aging had died out so completely and had been replaced so thoroughly by the modern interest in young sake that koshu was seen, at best, as a gimmick and, at worst, a worrying subversion of “proper” sake values.
The basement at Isekane, Takadanobaba, Tōkyō (page 240) is packed with premium sakes.
Why did koshu almost disappear? The growing popularity of wooden barrels for storing sake in the Edo period may have been partly to blame. The barrels allowed much more exposure to the air than the pottery vessels they replaced and therefore increased the risk of spoiling. They also imparted woody tastes that may have become overpowering after long aging. More lethal to the tradition, however, were tax laws introduced in the early Meiji period (1868–1912), which forced sake makers to pay tax on their sake as soon as it was made. Cash-strapped kura needed to get a return on their investments as soon as possible and this factor, plus faster distribution networks and wartime shortages, discouraged long storage of sake to such an extent that it became almost unknown.
Shingen Takeda
Shingen Takeda, known as “the Tiger of Kai,” is still remembered as one of the greatest samurai generals. He once led an army against the Hojo clan in freezing conditions in the middle of January. His troops were cold and facing a well-defended enemy on the top of a hill. Takeda is said to have ordered a large amount of sake to be heated in cauldrons and given to his men. “Do you feel warm now?” he shouted. “No,” they said. He replied: “You see those men on top of that hill? Imagine how they feel!”
A ukiyoe print of Takeda Shingen by Kuniyoshi Utagawa.
The modern koshu scene is rediscovering the complex tastes, fragrances and colors that aging adds to sake. Nobuhiro Ueno, a leading figure in the movement and manager of the Shusaron bar in Shinagawa (see page 68), says koshu can be classified into two broad types: air temperature-aged sake and refrigerator-aged sake. The air temperature koshu is often dark in color, with blood reds quite common (the color usually comes from reactions between sugars and amino acids in the liquid rather than from the barrels or pots used for storage, as is the case in whisky or rum aging). This type has a very wide range of tastes, including drinks reminiscent of sherry or Chinese Xiaoxing wine. Refrigeration, on the other hand, often produces sakes which are lighter in color, ranging from almost transparent to golds and greeny yellows. The taste is usually much closer to the ginjō sakes, with roundness, as well as biscuity and nutty flavors, often added by maturation. The sector is such a hive of innovation that Ueno admits any strict classification is doomed: combinations of cold and warm storage temperatures are being played with, as well as all sorts of storage containers (steel, glass and enamel-lined tanks; bottle aging, barrels, earthenware and ceramic pots) and a seemingly endless variety of brewing techniques (namazake, fortified sakes and even rice wines made with grape wine yeasts).
Mirin In the 1980s, the Japanese media was swept by a moral panic about alcoholic housewives. Shocked newspapermen reported that some of these women were so desperate they were known to drink mirin, a fortified rice wine that is commonly used in Japanese food. It was the ultimate sign of degradation, like lounging around the house in pajamas, swigging the cheapest cooking sherry while watching daytime television. But if the journalists who reported these horror stories had been a little more familiar with their alcohol history there might have been less sneering. Mirin does not mean “low-quality cooking wine,” although there are plenty of low-quality products describing themselves as mirin on the market. In fact, certain types were considered the height of sophisticated drinking in the Edo period (1603–1868); only in the 20th century did mirin come to be seen almost exclusively as a cooking ingredient. It is probably best thought of as “Japanese sherry” (although the production method is closer to port): rice and kōji are used, just as in normal sake making, but shōchū is added during the fermentation, suppressing the conversion of sugars into alcohol and producing a sweeter drink. Most cheap mirin in supermarkets are not really mirin and are solely intended for cooking, but drinking mirin is currently being rediscovered. Look out for glass-bottled (rather than plastic-bottled) mirin and for the words “Hon Mirin” (本みりん). Sometimes, the drinkable stuff is bottled under the Edo-period names “Hon Naoshi” (本直し) or “Yanagikage” (柳蔭).
Shirakawa festival, Gifu.
Drinking sake
My wife’s grandmother did not allow her husband to drink cold sake. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was considered very uncouth, the sort of thing a laborer might do on a building site. Even in the most oppressive months of the Japanese summer, the poor fellow, and many like him, had to drink his sake warmed.
Then the temperature police started getting into refrigeration. There was a time in the 1990s when it seemed everybody who was anybody was drinking a cold sake from Niigata. Heating up some sakes was deemed the height of bad form. There is a lovely story told by the manga writer Akira Oze about a kura owner he knew who asked for his own sake served kan (燜, “warmed”) at a sake pub. The landlord, not knowing who he was dealing with, refused, saying heating that particular sake was a heresy. The kura owner ordered the sake cold with a hot tōfu stew and then plonked the sake tokkuri in the stew, drawing aghast looks from other patrons and a derisive snort from the landlord.
The moral of the story is never to let others dictate how you enjoy your drink. You can have great fun playing with sake’s temperature. Unlike beer and wine, many sake will play fairly freely up and down a whole scale of temperatures. Finding out what temperature you think best suits a particular sake is part of the enjoyment of drinking. If my wife’s grandfather were still alive, he might have rediscovered the delights of kanzake (燜酒) at Isshin in Sendai (see page 57), where customers are encouraged to heat their own sake, monitor its temperature themselves and explore their own preferences freely.
At Isshin, they break their temperatures down to the nearest five degrees centigrade (ranging from 5 to 55 degrees centigrade). The more commonly used categories include hiyazake (cold sake, 5–15 degrees centigrade), hitohada kan (skin temperature, c. 35–40 degrees), nurukan (lukewarm, c. 40–45 degrees), jōkan (well-warmed, 45–50 degrees) and atstukan (hot, 50–55 degrees). Many premium sakes are very nice chilled just slightly (10–15 degrees, warmer than fridge temperature) but there are sakes that really come alive at much higher temperatures.
It is worth saying that, though this is a matter of personal taste, many sakes are served either too cold or too hot in Japanese restaurants in the West. I remember one particular occasion when the sake was just off boiling. There are two good ways of warming sake: you can warm a pan of water to the right temperature first and then put the sake jug in (harder to overheat the sake) or you can put the jug in a pan of cool water and then very gently heat it (which gives less of a shocking heat). Each has its adherents and they bicker with each other like English tea drinkers over the ancient question: “Milk, first or last?”
Ajihyakusen 味百仙 011-716-1000 ajihyaku.exblog.jp
B1F, Miyazawa Kōgyō Biru, 4 Kita Nana-jō Nishi, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido
北海道札幌市北区北七条西 4 宮澤興業ビル B1F
Open: Weekdays 5 pm–12 pm; Saturday 5 pm–11 pm; closed Sunday and national holidays
Booking recommended? Booking recommended on Fridays and weekends Credit cards? Most major cards
English menu? No Table charge: 500 yen
There was a time when Hokkaido sake did not have the best of reputations. Minoru Nagashima, owner of Ajihyakusen, has been working