Sake

Japanese sake is an elegant drink whose depth and diversity never cease to amaze us. Discover our selection.

Sake is a brewed rice alcohol with an alcohol content of around 15 degrees. We throw this out there bluntly to dispel a persistent legend that sake is a gut-wrencher, a white digestif with a solid 40 degrees that Chinese restaurateurs serve at the end of a meal in suggestive glasses (generally, this is actually baiju). Authentic sake, which the Japanese call "nihonshu" or "seishu", is actually a delicate drink with a thousand incarnations.

Traditionally, sake is brewed starting in November, just after the rice harvest. It is produced through a unique sake process known as double fermentation: a noble mold called "koji" (also involved in making miso and soy sauce) transforms the starch in rice into sugar, and simultaneously, yeast transforms this sugar into alcohol. The brewer's entire mission is to adjust all available parameters to ensure that the koji and yeast work well together. Obviously, this is a difficult task.

These parameters are numerous. Yet, all are crucial. Here is a list that is by no means exhaustive: which variety of rice to use? Which water to use? How polished should the grains be, that is to say, stripped of their outer layers to facilitate the work of the yeast? At what temperature to conduct the fermentation and for how long? The answers that the brewer provides to these questions will have a considerable impact on the taste of the final sake.

Let’s caricature for the sake of demonstration. A long and cold fermentation with highly polished rice will rather produce a sake with fruity aromas. We are talking about the "ginjo" style. A quick and warm fermentation with lightly polished rice, on the other hand, will yield a sake with notes of grains and honey. Between these two extremes, anything is possible!

There is an infinite variety of bouquets, textures, and flavors. In other words, the world of sake is at least as deep as that of wine. But unlike wine, sake is low in acidity and completely devoid of sulfites… It’s hard not to want to drink more and more as its tasting is astonishing and pleasant.

In addition to this diversity, there are sparkling sakes, aged "koshu" sakes, cloudy "nigori" sakes that contain some of the rice with which they were brewed, cedar cask sakes… A whole universe with rules and sensations that are unprecedented in our wine-drinking lands. The bonus? Due to its great smoothness, sake is infinitely easier to pair with food than wine.