Sake 101 – What is Premium Sake?

(upbeat music) - The people of Sake actually brought me into Sake. - Back in 1989, this place was actually a pizza on the main drag. - The first day was kind of soy sauce, it was miso. - To the point where it's actually changed my life. - New year's day in 1989. - Not just Sake as a beverage, but all the cultural mystery. - Welcome back and thank you for tuning into another episode of Sake on Air. The world's first podcast dedicated to expanding the dialogue surrounding Japan's iconic beverages. Sake, Shochu, and of course Avamori. My name is Cindy and today we're back with another topic of our Sake 101 series and we will be talking about what is premium Sake and with me I have Sebastien Limois who will help me answer a couple of these questions. Good morning. - Hello Cindy, good to be speaking with you today. - Yeah, I'm excited. I think premium Sake is such a loose term and I think lots of people using it and don't really understand what it is. So I'm excited to hopefully clear up a couple of misconceptions and help people understand Sake a little bit better. - Sure, I mean, well premium Sake means Sake of superior taste of course and I feel ready to pay riddle more for that. But of course by the way, premium Sake for me is not exactly what premium Sake is for you, is it? - No, exactly, because I was like, yeah, but taste is such a personal experience. So I don't always feel like the most expensive things are necessarily the tastiest for me personally. So I do know though with premium Sake, there are some markers that make a Sake premium versus not premium. So maybe we can talk first a little bit about the categories of premium Sake. - Sure, absolutely because I mean for, I mean, especially amongst specialists when we speak about premium Sake, we speak about, well, this is an English expression or an English term that is used to translate Tukuteme Shoshu, which is a Japanese expression that can be translated as well as special designation Sake. And it already says, oh, I mean, in special designation Sake, you have no notion of taste or quality directly, do you? I mean, Tukuteme Shoshu is something that was defined by the National Tax Administration. Tax is the main driver in the Sake industry anyway. And it is defined in what's called the Liquid Tax Act. This Tukuteme Shoshu special designation Sake category was introduced in 1989 and revised twice since, I think in 2003 and 2022. The key elements defining premium Sake and I'm gonna use that term from here on are technical parameters about Sake's composition. And in addition, there is a sort of a prescription about the brewing method that is used for certain Sake categories as well as resulting color or aromas, but again, it's not a qualitative judgment. The way I usually introduce the different grades or categories losing premium Sake is through a simple matrix. So, I mean, you can try to mentally represent this matrix has this table as two columns and four rows. Vertically, I will focus on Sake's composition is Sake made of rice, rice codi and water only. That's column one or is Sake made of rice, rice codi water and a little bit of this tidal coal was added at the end of fermentation. That is my column two. Because yes, a little bit of this tidal coal can be added to the Sake marsh before pressing. And therefore, you have already two sort of families within premium Sake, one is this rice only category that Japanese translate as june mai or express as june mai, pure rice. And you have that category where a little bit of alcohol was added at the end of the fermentation. And a generic term for that is aruten, arutenca, which means some alcohol has been added. - And that's interesting. So even though it would come from that column of aruten, it would still classify as premium Sake? - Absolutely. And there are some constraints on the type of Sake that fit within these grades. And going back to your question, you might be thinking of what makes or used to make really the bulk of the Sake market until recent years, i.e. Futsu shui or or table Sake, in which yes, I mean, you will have, or the brewer has the flexibility to have as much alcohol as he wishes to, to get to the taste and products he wants. But in the case of premium Sake, alcohol can be added, but there is a straight limitation. It can be only added up to 10% of the weight of the rice. Which I think it's important to actually share because a lot of times when they have new Sake drinkers, when they hear that there is alcohol added to it, they always feel it's to stretch the yield and it would be of lower quality, but actually in Sake, and especially in the premium categories, that's 100% not the case. And often actually makes it maybe even more delicious because there is a very real purpose of adding the alcohol, right? - Absolutely, I think of perfume. Perfume is alcohol fixing sense. And alcohol plays a similar role in premium Sake. It's about fixing some of the aromas that come from volatile esters on other components that would go away as the stake march goes through the pressing process. Plus in addition, but it becomes technical, it contributes to stopping fermentation and stabilizing the marsh. - Great, that's such a great example actually with the perfume, I never thought about it. So now that we have the two columns, you said there was like four categories within these? - That's right, and horizontally, we focus on the rice polishing ratio. Rice polishing ratio is the mass of the rice after polishing, divided by the mass of the rice before polishing. And I'm going to list the grade starting from the lowest polishing ratio. So if the rice was polished to 50% of its original mass, or less, so it means more than 50% was taken away from polishing, the brewer has the right to call the Sake Diaginjo. So you basically have two products, you have the June Mai Diaginjo, or the Diaginjo if a little bit of alcohol has been added. And then if the polishing ratio of the rice is 60% or less, the brewer may call the Sake June Mai Diaginjo, or Gainjo. And together, these four categories are often called Gainjo or Gainjo Sake. There are four more categories to go. One category is June Mai Sake. So June Mai Sake is generically premium Sake, but there is no condition on the rice polishing ratio. And parallel to that, or in front of that June Mai category, you will find the Honjozo category. But for Honjozo, there is a condition on the rice polishing ratio. The rice must have been polished to about 70% of its initial mass, or less. Now, I said there were eight categories in total. Because yes, you can add two more categories to the six already mentioned. One is Tokubetsu June Mai, or special June Mai. And the other one is Tokubetsu Honjozo, or special Honjozo. The legal definition of these last two categories with Tokubetsu in them is a little bit loose and a little bit of flexibility for the brewer. Typically, a June Mai Sake could be called Tokubetsu June Mai, if it has a rice polishing ratio, which is 60% or less. And it could be called June Mai Genjo, or it could be called Tokubetsu June Mai, because it is made with a certain rice or a certain process. And it's the same that applies to Tokubetsu Honjozo. - And you know what, this was such a great explanation of the grades, but for new Sake drinkers, it's so complicated. (laughs) - Yeah, it's really complicated, and it's administrative. And in reality, there are other conditions that the brewer's must respect to so that his Sake can be called, or her Sake can be called Tokubetsu June or special designation Sake. There needs to be 15% Koji or more. The rice needs to be inspected and have a certain grade. And as I was saying earlier on, the National People's Day, tax administration is going to verify that the brewing was made in accordance with certain standards. Aiming at obtaining a minimum quality for that premium sake, in particular, there's mention of Gingeo brewing, so brewing at low temperature and for a certain length of time. Because the matrix is complicated, but it may be useful for our listeners to keep in mind that certain sake styles are or can be associated with certain grades of the Tokute-Meshoshu matrix address described. For example, I would like to say that junior sake tends to be sake with a relatively deep flavor and often rice and it can often offer kind of rich aromas as well. By comparison, Gingeo sake or junior Gingeo sake tend to be quite smooth and have a refreshing taste, but still keeps a little bit of the rice umami or savouriness, but what's mostly characteristic of a Gingeo or junior Gingeo is its fragrance profile. One can expect putti or floral aromas. Junior Gingeo and Gingeo sake offer more delicate flavors and more intense putti aromas, especially Daeginjo sake. And by comparison, Honjo's sake would be like Gingeo but with slightly more subdued aromas. What I'd like to add at this point is like everything in sake and I guess everything in life, by the way, I mean things are more complicated than that and I mean I'm happy to apply and I would like to apply this analysis of taste of the taste of sake and aromas of sake to the whole industry in general, but when I do that I'm keeping a large margin for error and our listeners have to understand that there are lots of exceptions. I think one of my questions actually would have been for you to see if there is a common kind of taste profile or some commonalities within the grades and you take a some example of it but I 100% agree you never 100% know what's inside a bottle unless you actually opened it and drank a little bit. Until you open it yeah but I think the main purpose of this new sake classification introduced in 1989 was to help the consumer to choose and it does serve that purpose. I mean one of the first things I heard from my mentor and teacher John Gardner was well if you're in a sake shop or at a sake restaurant or sake centric restaurants and you don't know what to choose go for Gingeo because if you go for sake that is in the Gingeo family of the four top of the four first grades I described you are sure to get a certain standard of quality and a certain beauty aroma but yes there are tons of exceptions so that framework I was designing you can in terms of taste and flavors you can apply to the industry as a wall and I guess you can apply it to a single brewery products as well and that's what I often do like if I like a particular say June my Gingeo sake from a brewery and I say okay for my next bottle I'm gonna buy something slightly more delicate and possibly slightly more fragrant than yes maybe I'll choose a June my Gingeo sake or if I'm looking for something with maybe even deeper flavor and more rice related flavors then I will go to the June my category but what I certainly do not recommend is to use that framework to compare two different sake I mean what I mean by that is it would be wrong to assume that that particular June my sake from brewery A must be more fragrant than that June my sake from brewery B and that's another great advice because we do tend to just look at the categories and then put them all in one basket and compare them but actually going and looking at the brewer's portfolio and then evaluating your taste and what you might want to drink and or might enjoy next by doing so it's very smart I must say it also leads a little bit in another question I'd love to ask you for new sake drinkers how do I know this is premium sake if I'm in a sake shop or in a restaurant like how can I identify is it on the label what questions would I need to ask maybe the sommelier or if I'm in a restaurant to order premium or buy premium sake so most often brewers will mention the sake grade when it's a premium sake on the label so can be translated in on the back label if you are overseas or not so there are a few Japanese characters that you may need to learn if you or may need to be able to recognize if you want to really get into the world of sake but to these eight categories of grades that I described earlier correspond eight combinations of Japanese characters so June my June my gingelo June my da gingelo for example and so it's often mentioned on the label but what I need to say as well is sometimes it is not and it's the choice of the brewer not to do so another thing which is important to understand is the brewer does not necessarily have to call a sake a particular grade if the brewing of that sake respects the conditions of that grade and so very often for example you will see brewers putting on the market a sake that could be classified as June my da gingelo but the label will only mention June my gingelo or to kubitsu June my what I encourage our listeners to actually look at is the information the more technical information present on the label because if it's premium sake you will see the composition of the sake and so you'll be able to understand if it's made of rice rice koji and water or if a little bit of alcohol was added to it so you know already if it's a June my type or not and premium sake the brewer needs to mention the rice polishing ratio or say my boy so looking at that percentage and if you see 50 60 70 percent or even 23 percent this is not alcohol content this isn't say my boy it gives you a hint about what category that sake could fit in and I think that's one of the best recommendations is the polishing number and I do feel a lot of people especially in the past would have not wanted to drink sake because they thought that was the alcohol percentage so knowing that the 50 and the percentage sign or the 23 in the percentage sign actually relates to how the sake rice has been milled is probably one of the most important things that you can read on the label even if it's in Japanese because the numbers will always be in English right yes absolutely and by the way I mean there may be exceptions but I there is not that come to to my mind but the alcohol content is not mentioned using a percentage sign it's mentioned using a Japanese corrector though which means degrees so if you have a percentage sign this probably relates to the rice polishing ratio yeah so now that we have a lot of the technical terms and out of the way the question really is is premium sake better than not premium sake well I'm going to use a wine analogy and sorry about that but the question would be is an AOC wine better than a table wine for example here I'm not using AOC appellation d'origine contrôler in relation to an origin for the for the good but I'm I'm using AOC in relation to a set of parameters defined by regulation the fact that a wine respects such a set of parameters more or less guarantees a certain profile for the wine and it's a helpful guide to choosing third wine this is again what's the grading system is about however you have tons of products out there which are not respecting that set of parameters and a fun for very good reasons. For example, if you think about wine, they are not using the right grape, or if you think about sake, the rice was not inspected, for example. And you may have, I wouldn't say you may have very good surprises by opening a table sake, but what I'm going to say is there are lots of excellent sake outside the premium sake category as well. Under same time, if you're looking for certain profile like very delicate and fragrant sake, it is extremely likely that you will find them within the premium sake category. Yeah, and I agree on that, but I also think it's worth mentioning. I think there's a lot of great sake out there who don't fall into the category. I do think it often is a bit of a journey, you may enter through the premium categories, and then you take your dive into the weird and the wonderful and things that you might not expect. I certainly do enjoy them very, very much. Actually, now I was just thinking, so the premium sake, do you think premium sake should be drunk hot or cold? One of the great things about sake culture, of course, is certainly stopperature and the flexibility. More than that, the encouragement I feel I have to try sake at different temperatures. And here, my answer will be a function of the type of sake we are considering. And again, there are lots of exceptions, but in the case of a diginjous sake or events, often junior diginjous sake, the brewer has very carefully worked with the yeast, so that the yeast produces the right amount of fragrance to be above your detection level, your nose detection level, and leave all other aromas or fragrances below your detection level. If you hit such sake up, if you add energy to the drink, then suddenly you're changing its aroma profile completely. I'm not necessarily thinking that it's not going to be good, but you're most definitely not drinking what the brewer has crafted for you. So, my recommendation is don't try to warm up taginjous sake, possibly genmaidaginjous sake, at the same time, there are lots of exceptions and be aware of that. Now, if you go to the other end of the spectrum, honjousou in particular, and genmaid sake often, such sake are such that you can, and you should try them at many different temperatures, and they will be often equally enjoyable, cold, room temperature, or warm. That's great, and we do actually have also an episode on hot versus cold sake, so anyone who wants to learn a bit more about this, because it is a bit of a rabbit hole, feel free to check out that episode. Now, we talked about temperature, what about glassware? Should we drink premium sake out of the traditional hotchokos, or should we use a white wine glass or any other glassware for it? Is there a better way? Well, if I want to choose one vessel, I like to use a large enough toilet shaped glass vessel, because I think it is the best vessel to appraise a sake from sort of an epicoriant viewpoint. And in particular, judge its aromas through the nose, and then its texture, taste, and flavors on the palette. And I will say that is all the more relevant to use such a vessel, if you are drinking one of these very delicate and fragrance, sake is that you find in the june mai diginjou, diginjou, and often ginginjou or june mai gingou categories. Now, at the same time, the sake drinking culture encourages us to try these different, these amazing vessels that you will be able to enjoy at your local izakaya, small or large ceramics, wooden, lacquerware, gueno mi, or hotchokos. And so, because a drinking experience is much more than just what you put on the tongue, it's an experience you have through the hand as well, through the hand holding, through the palm of the hand, holding the vessel, I will definitely not throw them out, even premium sake, in particular june mai, on joseau, a tokobesujun mai, tokobesujun joseau, can be enjoyed in hotchokos or gueno mi. I personally tend to like them when they have a minimum volume or a minimum of a large enough shape, I've always found it's a little bit difficult to really appreciate the sake if the cup is too small. How about clear versus cloudy sake? Does premium sake always has to be clear? Excellent question. I mean, there is an episode that you can refer to as well, which is going to define what sake is, but very briefly sake, the administrative term for sake is a issue, which means that theoretically the beverage should be clear, and so the mash should have been filtered and filtered enough so that the sake is clear. But with evolutions in the brewing technology, evolutions of the taste of consumer, and I suppose pressure put on authorities by sake brewers, the rules have evolved, and today you will find some cloudy sake, nigorisake, in the premium category as well. So you can look for a june mai nigorisake, absolutely. And I guess my last question, because we've been covering so much, would be price tags, because when we think premium, we often also think expensive. I actually googled premium sake and the first couple of sake that I was shown for all 8000 yen plus, for anybody who's not in Japan, I mean an average bottle of sake for us costs maybe around 15, 1800 yen for something average that the steel can be again jazake, right? Absolutely. Obviously also the moment it leaves Japan and the taxes come in and all the markups, it will be quite a bit more expensive, but does premium sake have to be expensive to be good? Is our better, is more expensive going to be better than a more affordable sake? So there are different angles or different ways to answer your question. I mean one topic I want to comment is too often we are here, people thinking or telling me that the diginjo or gingio categories, because they are more expensive, they are better than other categories. So this idea that because it's higher price it is more premium and I want to clarify that that's not the case at all. There are very good reasons why a diginjo or gingio sake should be more expensive than a gingio or gingio sake made with the same rice. I mean starts with the polishing ratio, you need much more rice to produce a diginjo sake compared to a gingio sake. The other thing is this gingio brewing methods that requires more time and is often done in smaller batches. So yes, it is not a surprise that there is a bit of a premium necessarily associated, I'm not talking in price here, associated with a delicate premium sake versus a table sake. However, that premium in price is not necessarily very high. As you were mentioning in Japan, we can find premium sake and I would say 95%, 90% of the premium sake that I'm drinking will be below 2000, 2500 years, so that's 15 euros or 17 dollars, 17 U.S dollars, and so it does not necessarily have to be very expensive. What makes me quite happy, I must say, is to see that with your exceptions, you can kind of trust the price of sake in the Japanese market and don't be shocked if you see a non-premium sake price at the level of a premium sake. It is worth it. Again, I very much agree. I said it was my last question, but I just thought of the last last question. It's about storing premium sake. Is there a certain way that it should be stored once I bring it home? That's an excellent question. More than the grade, the pasteurization or the absence of pasteurization is a key driver in the way you should store your sake. If your sake is non-pasteurized, keep it in the fridge. If it is pasteurized, you have a little bit of room for maneuver. At the same time, if you are buying one of these delicate and highly fragrance sake in the Daeginjo and Junai Daeginjo category, my fairly clear recommendation is to store it in the fridge as well, or at least in a wine cellar at a relatively low temperature. Because it's going to evolve, and in particular, some of that fragrance is going to slowly but surely go with time if it's not stored in the right conditions. And then of course, I guess once it's opened, it should live inside the fridge, right? Absolutely. And there's a big difference between say, "A Junai Great Sake and Daeginjo Great Sake." The Daeginjo Great Sake will change much more rapidly if only because the fragrance will be gone the second day, or most of the fragrance will be gone the second day, whereas a Junai Great Sake will, if properly stored in the fridge, keep its taste and flavors for a much longer time. That's again, solid advice. And I hope more people will go out and try different kinds of sake, whether it's premium or not. There's certainly a lot of reasons for drinking and trying as many varieties as there is, as the premium grades as you so nicely explained it to us earlier. It's not necessarily signaling a flavor or taste profile, but just gives you an idea of what kind of sake you might have in front of you. But yeah, it's a bastion. Thank you so much for coming in today and sharing all your knowledge with us. Premium Sake. There's so many questions about it. I do hope that today's episode will help people choose their sake more wisely. It's a nice and useful guideline when you don't know when you want to purchase, but another recommendation is always to be adventurous and try outside the categories that you may be looking for. Again, I 100% agree. So yeah, I mean, this will do, I guess, for today's episode of Sake on Air. Again, thank you so much for joining. Pleasure. And we will be back with more Sake on Air very soon. Of course, if you have questions and comments, please do send them to us at [email protected] or you can also find us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook also @sakeonair. This will do for today's episode, so I hope you're all going to go and drink more Sake. This will be all for today, so until our next time. Goodbye. Goodbye, Cindy. This episode has been made possible with the generous support of the Japan Sake and show to your makers association. Sake on Air is produced by Export Japan, and our team is Justin Potts, Mio Ota, Cindy Bissig, Sebastian Laman, John Gautner, Chris Hughes, Rebecca Wilson, Marina Gata, Christopher Peligrini, Arlene Limes, Chiosso Imada, and Frank Walter.