The Japanese Sake Bible. Brian Ashcraft

       A WONDERFUL TIME TO BE A SAKE DRINKER

       The morning sun shines on the waves in the harbor as seagulls wail. I look out across the bay to Hokkaido, where I spent time exploring Japan’s rich whisky tradition for my book Japanese Whisky. This pier in Aomori Prefecture is the farthest north I’ve been on the main island of Honshu, where I’ve lived since 2001. It was on this isle that sake as we know it was born.

      Snow won’t fall for a few weeks, but the brewing season is in full swing. I’ve ridden train after train, all over Honshu, spending morning after morning in sake breweries and evenings with some of the best sake in Japan—which is, of course, the best in the world.

      I often think of the first time I stepped into a sake brewery. It was in 2005, on a crisp fall morning like this in Nara, Japan’s ancient capital. I remember the elegant fermented smells hitting my nose as I walked up the dirt road toward the white-walled brewery. I remember marveling that rice, water, yeast and the seemingly magical koji microorganisms could create one of the most amazing brews I’d ever imbibed.

      This is an interesting time for sake, even as number of breweries continues to decline. During the late 1800s there were 30,000 breweries in Japan, a number that was halved due to new taxes, increased national competition and brewery consolidation. During the 20th century, through the chaos of war and Japan’s economic miracle, that number continued to drop. There are currently some 1,500 sake breweries in Japan. Not all of those are operational, but the best put their own spin on a process that turns rice and water into ambrosia.

      As the number of breweries dropped, so did sake sales. After a post–World War II peak in 1975, sake consumption in Japan began to slide. In the Japanese liquor business, sake’s prevalence has fallen from a dominant 80 percent during the pre–World War II years to less than 7 percent as of 2017. Beer, by comparison, accounts for around 32 percent of sales, and shochu approximately 10 percent. Liquor taxes, which were powered by sake sales and helped fund Japanese modernization and imperialism during the 20th century, comprised over 30 percent of the nation’s taxes in the early 1900s. In 2017, liquor taxes barely amounted to 2 percent, with sake outsold by shochu, liqueurs, and beer. Yet, according to the Japanese National Tax Agency, sake exports have increased from 1.8 million gallons in 2001 to 6.8 million gallons in 2018, with export sales up 113 percent from the previous year. That increase far surpasses those of Japanese beer, wine and whisky.

      People around the world are starting to get into sake like never before, not only opening up new markets for Japanese sake but also giving rise to a new generation of breweries born on foreign soil. Best of all, brewers in Japan and abroad are making some delicious stuff. This is a great time to be a sake drinker. It couldn’t happen to a better beverage.

      Sake is one of the few Japanese industries that is larger than any one company or any single individual. Even if the biggest sake makers went under tomorrow, its importance and production would still continue across the country. The oldest Japanese texts mention sake (albeit a very different iteration of the modern drink). Sake is used in religious ceremonies and celebrations. It is Japan’s gift to the world of drinks. During Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira’s first cabinet meeting on January 5, 1980, he said, “Sake is our national beverage.” The word he used was kokushu, literally meaning “national alcohol.” Ohira wanted the Japanese government to serve sake to visiting officials and heads of state, expressing the fact that sake does not just reflect Japanese culture; it is Japanese culture.

      This book, although it contains technical information, is not a technical guide. It’s a dive into the drink’s deep culture and long history, peppered with vignettes that tell a larger story. I visited breweries, drank and geeked out about sake with my coauthor, sake sommelier and blogger Takashi Eguchi. Between us we visited over 150 breweries. Eguchi traveled around the world, visiting breweries in Taiwan, Mexico and Brazil. Our research showed us that great things are happening—a new generation of brewers has arrived.

      So here I am, standing on this pier in far northern Japan, looking out at the bay. Tugboats putt-putt by. Waves crash. Seagulls wail. In less than an hour, I’m due at a nearby brewery.

      This has been quite the journey.

      —Brian Ashcraft

      

      In the wide-mouthed sakazuki cup is the reflection of a kabuki actor. Seeing reflections in sake vessels was a popular visual trope in the Edo period (1603–1868).

      CHAPTER 1

SAKE: JAPAN’S NATIONAL BEVERAGE

DEFINING SAKE

      Japan’s earliest written records, dating back to the 8th century, used the imported Chinese kanji character 酒 for sake. In Japanese, the way this character is read can change. Alone, it’s simply “sake.” When added to the end of words it is read as -zake or -shu.

      For 1,000 years, “sake” has referred to booze brewed from (usually) rice. The word “sake” is thought to be related to the Japanese word sakaeru, meaning “to flourish” or “to prosper.” The theory is that sake was sakae mizu, or “glorious water,” and that, over time, simply became “sake.” Another theory is that sa referred to the rice deity Sanaburi, while ke was an ancient reference to food.

      In the late 16th century the Portuguese, the first Westerners in Japan, first documented the drink for the Western world, with an entry for saqe in a 1603 Japanese-Portuguese dictionary. The Dutch dubbed it sacki. In English, the drink has been incorrectly written “saki.” It’s also been written “saké” to differentiate it from the English word. Increasingly, it’s just “sake.”

      By the late 19th century, when Japan was rapidly Westernizing, the word nihonshu (or nipponshu), which literally means “Japanese alcohol,” was used to distinguish the domestic drink from imported yoshu or “Western alcohol.” “Sake” typically means liquor in general. In spoken Japanese, nihonshu is commonly used for the drink that we call “sake,” thus avoiding any confusion. Abroad, “sake” or “Japanese sake” is fine. In 2015, the terms “nihonshu” and “Japanese sake” were given official geographical indications to separate products brewed in Japan from those not.

      Sake is legally defined as being filtered from fermented rice, koji and water. Brewer’s alcohol is among the permitted additives; total additives cannot exceed 50 percent of the rice. The legal term seishu 清酒 (refined sake) is the modern term for filtered

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