Over my 19 day trip to Japan, I saw multiple interpretations of every step of sake production – from milling rice to the excruciatingly slow gravity drip (pictured below) required to make some of the most expensive and delicate sake available. Every producer gave me a new piece of the puzzle, and now I’m going to clarify exactly what Sake is from starch to bottle.

In Japan, the word “Sake” describes a general category that defines all alcohol made in the country. It is not just the umami laden, highly mineral and refreshing fermented rice beverage that I became enamored with some years ago. Rather, it also refers to Shochu, Awamori and any Whisky, Beer, Wine or other alcoholic beverage made on any of Japan’s 430 inhabited islands. What the rest of the world calls “Sake,” Japan specifically refers to as “Nihonshu,” which literally means “Japanese Alcohol.” This is to say that all Nihonshu is Sake, but not all sake is Nihonshu.

Calling a fermented rice beverage “sake” is not incorrect but to call it “Nihonshu” is more correct. To this effect, I have come to refer to Nihonshu as “sake” with a small “s” as in “wine” as it is a singular beverage made with fermented rice as a key ingredient. I generally refer to all Japanese alcohol as “Sake” with a large “S” to denote all alcohol produced in Japan.

Sake production is extremely meticulous. So much of the work happens in the brewery, and the Japanese government doesn’t allow estate bottling so the relationships between farmers and brewery owners is critical. As complicated and time honored as it all is, there are regular misunderstandings and exaggerations about how convoluted sake is.

The Oxford Dictionary calls wine “an alcoholic drink made from fermented grape juice.” People will allow other fruit to fall into the wine category with entries like strawberry wine, peach wine and the like, but I disagree. For me, wine always has been and always will be made from fermented grapes and grapes alone. It can take on many forms from Champagne to Coonawara Cabernet Sauvignon, but it will always be the grapes. Accordingly, one thing is for sure: Sake cannot be called rice wine!

For hundreds of years, the law has explicitly required sake to be produced from Rice, Water, Yeast and Koji Mold. While fermentation happens when yeast consumes sugar to release alcohol and CO2, sake rice doesn’t have fermentable sugars nor does it go through a malting process like barley (for example) in beer and whisky production. Instead, sake rice converts its starches to fermentable sugars in the same tank that yeast is introduced to consume the sugars and begin fermentation. As dry as the explanation sounds, the name for the process, “multiple parallel fermentation,” is even drier, but this is the essence of how Nihonshu is made.

It is the Koji mold that allows multiple parallel fermentation to happen because it penetrates an individual grain of rice like a blue vein of Penecillium in Gorgonzola, but it can make the result taste like frosted Rice Crispies. While the use of Koji mold can be found in a variety of regions throughout Asia, Japan has championed its use and made it another unique quality of their nation’s beverages.

Next post: An individual grain of rice polished to exactly half of its original size all to make a “better” sake.

Elliot's Article: Sake is NOT Rice Wine