Sake 101
By Leigh Ranucci

A few months ago, Wine Wizards, one of Rhode Island's wine distributors, hosted a Sake Seminar at Tokyo Restaurant on Wickenden Street in Providence. It was an event for the trade, retailers and restaurateurs, and we were excited at the opportunity to have the often confusing topics of the culture, classifications and processes of making of Sake, explained to us in Western terms. Paul Tanguay of Vine Connections was our speaker. Paul is a French Canadian sommelier who discovered a passion for Sake and financed his own travels to Japan to learn every thing he could about the beverage. The only Japanese he speaks is Sake-ese. His perspective was the perfect angle for us uninitiated to get a crash course in this elusive subject.

First task at hand - what is Sake?

Erroneously referred to as rice “wine,” it is a brewed beverage, more akin to beer. A simple beverage comprised of four (and in some cases five) ingredients, the most important of which is water (in fact, 70% of Sake is water). After water comes rice, then koji (a mold which converts starch into sugar) and yeast (which converts sugar into alcohol). That fifth ingredient is the addition of up to but not more that 10% of distilled alcohol (grain based), a practice that came out of historical necessity during WWII, which saw a severe rice shortage. Paul explained this to us all in an historic context, as Sake evolved over many hundreds of years to its current perfected state of a very precise production method.

The rice is milled or polished, then washed and soaked. Twenty percent of this batch of rice is taken into steam room where koji is added and starches are transformed into sugar. This mix acts as a starter, which is added to the larger original batch of rice and hence begins what is the only "multiple parallel fermentation" process of any alcoholic beverage. That is, while the koji is still active converting starch of the larger rice batch into sugar, the yeast are is acting on already converted sugars, creating alcohol.

Eventually complete conversion takes place and the whole mass is pressed, rendering the alcohol off its kasu or lees. The resulting liquid is then diluted with water - usually of the same source as the water with which the rice was soaked and steamed, then pasteurized (a method discovered but not documented by the Japanese before Louis) and finally subject to filtration, most commonly by charcoal.

OK, so much for the process. There are different levels of sake. Premium sake is categorized by the following criteria:

1. Whether or not there has been alcohol added. They are two types here: Junmai refers to pure rice (no alcohol added) and Honjozo refers to alcohol added.

2. The degree to which the rice is milled.
The more milled, the higher the quality. By milling the rice, proteins and amino acids, which impart off tastes, are taken away. The more milled the rice, the smoother, fruitier and floral is the sake. It has less acidity and less earthiness.

There are two types: Ginjo is rice milled to at least 60% (remaining), and Daiginjo, is rice milled to at least 50% (remaining)

3. Whether or not the sake has been filtered. Nigori refers to a sake that is unfiltered.

So a sake that is Junmai Ginjo is a pure sake milled to at least 60%. A Junmai Daiginjo is a step up in quality as it is a pure sake milled to 50%. A straight Daigingo is polished to 50% but is not pure since alcohol has been added. A straight Junmai is pure sake, but not highly polished (this is the lowest grade of premium sake). A Junmai Nigori is a pure sake that is unfiltered. Paul likes to refer to this style as "Cloudy Sake".

The provenence of the water and of the rice, and the select varietal of rice are what give sake its terroir or individual character. Only 10% of rice grown in Japan is sake grade (there are 80 different varieties of sake grade rice). As much as these determine the quality of a sake, they are not usually indicated on the bottle and are not part of the official classification system of sake.

Premium sake is not meant to be consumed warm, but rather slightly chilled.

So after all sake is a a simple beverage of simple ingredients, not difficult to understand, just a question of getting 5 or 6 vocabulary under your belt and then of course tasting it!