Sake

What sake is

Four things make sake: rice, koji, water and yeast — plus, in some grades, a measured dose of distilled alcohol, as the designations below spell out. The koji — a mould grown on steamed rice — breaks the starch down into sugar, and the yeast turns that sugar into alcohol, both at once and in the same tank. Brewers call it multiple parallel fermentation, and it is why an undistilled drink arrives at around 15% to 16%, a little above most wine. Nothing goes through a still, so on this site sake sits next to wine rather than on the spirits shelf. Japanese has two words for it, seishu in the tax code and nihonshu in ordinary speech, and the second is worth recognising on a label: in Japan it is a protected geographical indication, reserved for sake brewed there from Japanese-grown rice.

How far the rice is polished

Seimaibuai is the share of each grain left after milling. A figure of 60% means the outer 40% has been ground away. The outside of the grain and its germ hold most of the protein and fat, which muddy the aroma if too much of them reaches the tank, so brewing rice is milled far harder than the rice anyone cooks for dinner — that is roughly 92% — and the Japanese average now sits around 61%. More polishing tends towards a lighter body and a more overt, often fruity aroma. It is a tendency, not a ranking: what gets ground away is flavour too, and a less polished sake keeps a grainy weight that plenty of drinkers are looking for.

The named grades

Japan's National Tax Agency defines eight special designations, and they turn on only two questions — whether distilled alcohol has been added, and how far the rice was milled.

• Junmai: rice, koji and water only, with no added alcohol. No milling requirement at all.
• Honjozo: milled to 70% or less, with added distilled alcohol capped at 10% of the weight of the rice.
• Ginjo: milled to 60% or less. Daiginjo: 50% or less. Both are made by the slow, cool ginjo method, and both may carry the same small addition of alcohol.
• Junmai ginjo and junmai daiginjo: the same two thresholds, without the added alcohol.
• Tokubetsu junmai and tokubetsu honjozo: 60% or less, or some other special method that the label has to explain.

All eight also require that at least 15% of the rice used is koji rice. Anything that meets none of the definitions is futsushu, table sake — and table sake is still the bulk of what is brewed, more than half of Japanese production in recent years. It is what most izakaya pour by the flask, and it is not a lesser thing to order.

Temperature

Few drinks change as much with temperature as this one. Chilled, often to about 10°C, the aromatics tighten and the finish turns crisp; at room temperature the body and the sweetness are easiest to read; warmed — kan, usually somewhere between 40°C and 50°C — the rice sweetness and the savoury side open out and the acidity softens. These are tendencies rather than rules. Aromatic ginjo and daiginjo are generally poured cold, since that is where the aroma you paid for survives, while sturdier junmai and honjozo tend to take warming well and are often better for it. The quickest way to settle it is to pour a glass, leave it, and taste again ten minutes later as it climbs.

Reading the label

• The designation — junmai, honjozo, ginjo, daiginjo — sets the broad expectation.
• The polishing ratio, which any bottle carrying a designation must print. A smaller number means more of the grain was removed.
• Nihonshudo, the sake meter value, read off the liquid's density: positive tends drier, negative tends sweeter. Treat it as a hint. It measures sugar, not the impression in your mouth.
• Acidity, printed as a small figure that mostly runs between 1 and 3. Higher reads as firmer and cleaner-finishing, and it only means anything alongside the meter value.
• The bottling date. Since 2023 printing it has been optional rather than required, so take it as a freshness clue when it is there.
• Namazake, sake that has never been pasteurised. It must be kept cold and it has the shortest life of anything in this category.

Keeping a bottle

Heat, light and air all work against sake. Ultraviolet in particular produces a flat, oniony fault the Japanese call nikkoshu, a sunstruck smell, so keep bottles in the dark rather than on a windowsill or under a strip light. Once a bottle is open, think in weeks: a pasteurised sake kept in the fridge holds up for a fortnight or so, aromatic ginjo for less, and unpasteurised namazake is best finished within a few days. Store it upright with the cap tight, and buy the size you will actually drink — the 720 ml bottle is easier to finish in good condition than the 1.8 litre one.

At the bar

No drink in Mixtini's catalogue uses sake today, so this page has no list of recipes attached — that is the current state of the catalogue, not an oversight. Behind a bar, though, sake earns its place: at roughly a third of the strength of gin or vodka, it can stand in for part of the spirit in a stirred drink and give a lighter, softer, more savoury version of it, and it works as the first drink of an evening on its own. Some bars in Taiwan put sake and shochu on the cocktail list outright — find one on the map and ask what they are pouring.

Umeshu and shochu are not sake

Umeshu is green ume fruit and sugar steeped in a spirit, very often shochu; Japanese law classes the result as a liqueur, and it belongs with the liqueurs. Shochu itself is distilled, as is Korean soju. The line between them and sake is not the ingredient — plenty of shochu is made from rice — but whether the drink has been through a still.

Further reading: wine, liqueurs and herbal spirits, stirring.