The Japanese Sake Bible. Brian Ashcraft
which is always a real treat. Typically sake is pasteurized, matured, filtrated, cut with water and pasteurized again before it is bottled and shipped. (The second pasteurization sometimes happens after the sake has already been bottled.) The different nama brews eliminate one or more of these steps. Nama-zake should be refrigerated and enjoyed in a timely manner.
Nama-zume-shu 生詰め酒: Literally “live bottled sake,” this brew follows the same post-pressing steps as regular sake, but skips the final pasteurization.
Nama-chozo-shu 生貯蔵酒: Literally “live stored sake,” this brew also follows the same post-pressing steps as typical sake, but it forgoes the first pasteurization.
Nama-zake 生酒: In this case “nama” means “raw” or “unprocessed.” This sake is diluted, but is not pasteurized. Unless the label reads muroka (無濾過), meaning “unfiltered,” it has been filtered to balance the flavors. The increased use of chilled shipping containers and the proliferation of refrigeration in sake storage has meant more nama-zake has become available not just in Japan but around the world.
Nama-genshu 生原酒: This is the “raw” or “unprocessed” version of genshu. It skips both pasteurizations and goes straight from pressing to bottling with filtering, unless it’s muroka (“unfiltered”).
PREMIUM SAKE RISING
The Return of Junmai
“My father was the first person to bring back the sake made from 100 percent rice that today we’d call junmai-shu,” says Hiroshi Ujita, owner of Tamanohikari in Fushimi, Kyoto. It was 1964, the year of the Tokyo Olympics, and for the first time since World War II ended, pure sake was back. “Before the war, all sake was junmai-shu,” says Ujita. Moments ago, he had been working on a laptop in a conference room, but leaped up after hearing me ask about his brewery’s history. His eyes are lively, and his voice is booming. This is important history, and his father, Fukutoki, had a major part in it.
“Up until 1940, Japanese law said that sake was made from rice, koji and water,” Ujita says. During the war and in the years after, rice shortages meant that brewers had to make sake with little or even no rice. As in the past, the government needed an alcohol tax to raise funds. “So, sake started being made with added brewer’s alcohol, glucose and amino acids.” The additives were cheaper than making sake from just rice. But it was the customers who ended up paying a different price. “You drink that stuff and the next day, you’re going to end up with a pounding headache,” says Ujita. “My father didn’t want to sell sake that gave people nasty hangovers. The answer was to make sake as it had been before the war.”
Yucho Shuzo brewery goes to great lengths to bottle the freshest nama-zake possible. Their Kaze no Mori sake, pictured here, is reviewed on page 235.
The sake business, however, was rolling in money, thanks to added-alcohol brews. The profit margins were enormous, and other brewers, as well as the Japanese tax office, probably weren’t thrilled with the idea of cutting into those margins by ditching brewer’s alcohol and other additives. But by 1961, rice shortages had ended and surpluses actually became a problem. Without that extra rice, it would have been difficult to make the shift back to additive-free sake.
At that time, the term “junmai-shu” did not exist. Tamanohikari used the word mutenka-shu, or “additive-free sake.” (These days, the term is used to refer to sake made with ambient, not added, yeast.) It might seem innocuous now, but at that time, the descriptor was confrontational. It strongly implied that other sake makers were adding things. “It was like dad was picking a fight,” says daughter Chiyoko Higashi, who sits on the brewery’s board of directors.
Tamanohikari’s mutenka-shu went on sale in 1964. It was a revolutionary moment in post – World War II sake history, but this was initially lost on the country’s sake drinkers. Higashi explains, “After my father had made up his mind, the resulting sake was expensive, and customers at that time didn’t understand why.” From 1940 to 1993, the Japanese government categorized sake into different grades and taxed them accordingly. Tamanohikari didn’t submit its expensive pure-rice sake to the tax office, reasoning that it would be taxed less to help keep its already high price down, even though the country would classify it at a lower grade. “It was grade-two sake,” says Ujita—the cheaper stuff—even though Tamanohikari’s sake was a premium sake at a premium price.
The sign reads Kanzen mutenka seishu tamanohikari or “Completely additive-free refined sake Tamanohikari.”
“It was comical, because, at department stores, the staff would say, ‘This is Tamanohikari and it’s made from 100 percent rice,’” says Ujita. “The customer would ask what grade it was, be told it was grade two, and then say they couldn’t buy lower-grade sake as a gift. The customers wouldn’t even listen.” (Japan’s gift-giving culture, incidentally, helped ensure steady sake sales during the postwar era; companies would send bottles of sake for summer and winter gifts.) Fukutoki Ujita knew that pure-rice sake might not catch on if people didn’t understand what it was. “He had to change perceptions, and he needed regular folks to understand,” says the younger Ujita. “Which is why he opened a restaurant, our first, in Tokyo Station.” That was in July 1969.
A Tamanohikari worker sorts bottles as they come down the bottling line.
Tamanohikari Black Label is a junmai daiginjo made with Omachi rice polished to 35 percent, which is quite a feat considering how difficult polishing Omachi can be. The tassels are all tied by hand. For more on Omachi, see pages 80–81.
While the general public might not have yet embraced the pure-rice sake, other sake makers were starting to. In Hiroshima, Kamoizumi Shuzo began making its own mutenka-shu in 1965, and after some trial and error made what would be considered a junmai ginjo today. “We didn’t aim to turn junmai-shu into a luxury product,” says Kamoizumi’s Kazuhiro Maegaki. “In 1965, when the limits on the rice supply were lifted, it became possible to brew sake without adding brewer’s alcohol.” The brewery did a series of tests, attempting to manage the higher cost of raw materials as well as adjusting the different flavors and clarity of those early junmai revivals. Finally, in 1972, Kamoizumi released its all-rice brew. “When it went on sale,” says Maegaki, “it wasn’t labeled as junmai-shu, but rather, mutenka seishu” (that is, additive-free refined sake). During that same period, Hiroshi Uehara, a sake consultant and researcher, worked with brewers in Tottori to bring back junmai-shu in 1967, while in Kyoto, Masuda Tokubee Shoten was already seeing how its junmai brew would age. Chiyonosono Shuzo, a brewery in Kumamoto, launched its own junmai-shu in 1968.
The next decade put the pure-rice sake revival into high gear. In 1970, there was a rice surplus, which led to the repeal of a law that allotted only a certain amount for sake production. Suddenly, brewers were able to get their hands on as much rice as they needed. The Junsui Nihonshu Kyoukai (Pure Japanese Sake Association) was founded in 1972; its members included Tamanohikari and Kamoizumi. In the years that followed, breweries began labeling their sakes as “junmai-shu” (“pure-rice sake”) instead of “mutenka-shu.” In 1982, the Shinkame brewery in Saitama because the first brewery in the postwar era to switch all of its production to junmai-shu only, something that is now standard in many craft breweries.
“As of 2017, junmai-shu comprises 25.9 percent of the sake made in Japan,” says Ujita. “Meaning that nearly three-quarters of it still has added alcohol.”