Quick — name five white wines. Okay, you might list chardonnay and sauvignon blanc. Maybe you chose the exotic viognier or a pinot grigio. But what about a wine not made from grapes? Technically, wine is the alcoholic drink made by fermenting fruits or berries. So is a wine not made from fruit and berries a wine? What about a beverage made from fermented rice? Is sake a white wine?
Typically, beverages made from cereals and grains are not considered wines. In fact, the US government classifies sake as a beer since it is made from rice, a cereal. But the dilemma exists because of the alcohol content. The alcohol content of sake is higher than beer. Sake’s alcohol content ranges from 13 to 16 percent, which is stronger than most wines (not fortified wines), but not to the alcohol level of distilled spirits.
Grocery stores sell sake in the wine aisle and with the number of sushi bars increasing and the strong Asian influence in many restaurants, a variety of sake is showing up on area wine lists as well. For the past several decades, sake has been made in the US. Two California companies, Hakusan in Napa Valley and Takara Sake USA in Berkeley, which sell their products in Charlotte, have tasting rooms that are open to the public. Takara even has a 1570 square foot museum containing artifacts and implements from Japanese sake making. The Rising Sun Cocktail (sake, cranberry juice, and lemon) is making headway on bar lists.
So here’s the quick crash course on sake. While it is true that sake is made from rice, it is not your ordinary cooking rice. Sakamai, or rice variety, is the important difference in sake. In Japan, where sake has been produced since the third century BC, 65 rice varieties are used to make sake although nine primary varieties dominate the field. This group includes Yamada Nishiki, Omachi, and Gohyaku Mangoku. The best rice for sake is a short grain rice with a plump center (the shinpaku, to be exact). Polishing the grain removes many of the undesirable elements such as lipids and minerals. The procedure is very exact and expensive. Depending on whether you are drinking premium sake or not, each rice kernel has been milled from between 70 to 50 percent. As with any food item, where the product is grown is reflected in the taste. In California, sake producers are using a short grain rice grown in the Sacramento Valley.
Since 80 percent of the sake brewing process is water, the purity of the water is critical. In the past, Japanese sake producers touted the benefits of using water from rivers, which flowed from famous mountains such as Mt. Rokko. But pollution has changed this thinking, and today many sake companies use water from underground springs or they filter ordinary tap water.
After the rice is polished, it is washed, steeped, and cooled. Koji, a yellow- molded rice, is scattered across the original mixture. The mold helps the starch in the rice to convert to sugar, and then yeast converts the sugar into alcohol. The final steps of making sake involve squeezing and filtration, and pasteurization before going into the blending tank. Then the product is bottled. The unique feature about sake is that the double fermentation allows for a higher alcohol level.
To not differentiate premium sake from inexpensive sake is similar to lumping a micro-brewed beer with an industrial lager beer. The words to look for on the labels of better sakes are junmai-shu which has a 70 percent milling rate and no alcohol added; junmai ginjo-shu which is fermented at colder temperatures and the rice is milled to 60 percent; and the top of the line and rather complex junmai dainjo-shu which uses highly polished rice which has been milled at a 50 percent rate. The word junmai means “rice only” and thus no distilled alcohol has been added. Pure rice sake is frequently diluted with purified water to bring it back to a 16 percent alcohol level. Many of these sakes are sold in the US as hard liquor. Sake lasts for about a year on the shelf, except mild sake that has a shelf life of three months. Once opened, sake is best if kept in the refrigerator for only a few days.
Should you drink sake hot or cold? Sake drafts such as Ginjo and Nama should be chilled, just as you would a chardonnay. The one-serving bottles of these sakes are often found near the sushi counter in the grocery store. Premium sakes are also better chilled. Lesser sakes release more of their flavor when heated, but they should not be made hot. Sake should never be put into a microwave. Overheating sake will destroy the flavor. The proper temperature is between 104 degrees and 120 degrees. If the sake is too hot to touch, then it is too hot to taste. Heating the sake to 120 degrees will cause the alcohol to begin to evaporate and this is what many consumers smell and what causes them to believe that sake is strongly alcoholic.
The burning question remains about sake: must we drink sake in those itty-bitty porcelain, sometimes plastic, cups? Or those awkward square wooden containers? I suspect the reason for those cups being so small is that refilling your dining companion’s drink cup is part of Japanese etiquette and constantly refilling the cup would demonstrate largess on the part of the pourer. But who can keep track of the number of those small cups consumed?
If your only experience with sake is having an overheated or microwaved bottle in a restaurant, there is much for you to explore. Check out a good Japanese restaurant that features a lengthy sake list or visit a local wine shop or grocery store to pick up a bottle of a flavorful premium grade sake. Sake may become your other white wine.
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This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2002.
