12 Days of Sake
It's difficult, and expensive, to give an interesting wine gift to a wine lover. Here's a suggestion based on the idea that the best possible gift is something you love that you wouldn't have bought for yourself.
Premium sake!
Most people balk at laying out $40 or more for a bottle of sake – even folks like us who spend it on wine. Thus most wine lovers have never had a $40 bottle of sake. People often ask me what it's like. Answer: Really good! Hence, the perfect gift.
Buying a great sake is easy once you commit to spending some money. In fact, it's easier than wine, because sake is generally priced by its cost of production, whereas much of the cost of many expensive wines is brand image and marketing. If you spend $50, you might not get a good wine, but you will almost certainly get a very good sake.
I have been writing about sake longer, though less frequently, than I have about wine. This is not some newspaper columnist discovering that sake exists and it's made from rice. If you have sake questions, I will answer them on Twitter. First, here are some good general rules.
All sakes made outside Japan are inferior to good Japanese sakes
Non-Japanese sake gets a disproportionate amount of media coverage, without perspective. This also happens with wine: local writers in, say, Texas write about a great new Texas winery, without comparing its products to wines from Italy or Washington. Buy Japanese. Your palate will thank you.
A great sake you can buy is better than a great sake you can't buy
Distribution of top sake is really limited. I recently judged at a competition in Japan and we gave 36 platinum medals; only three of those sakes are available in the US. Don't obsess on getting the very best possible sake (with wine, that would mean DRC or nothing, right?) and get a good one.
Freshness matters
Most sake is best when drunk within a year of its release. Buy it and drink ... excuse me, because you're giving it as a gift, tell the recipient to drink up!
Serve sake when you would normally drink white wine
I usually have sake with fish, especially raw fish (we make sashimi at home). But sake is also excellent with roast chicken, roast pork, bangers and mash – basically, any white-wine food.
Ginjo, daiginjo and honjozo sakes should be served chilled (ideally, white-wine temperature). Junmai sakes can be served at room temperature
Most people's introduction to sake is cheap sake served hot. It's like mulled wine: nothing wrong with it, but don't heat up your best sake.
Use a white-wine glass
Riedel gave us a 45-minute presentation recently on its new ginjo sake glass, which is exactly the same as its Riesling glass, except the stem is shorter or longer – I forget. It looks exactly the same. Point is, you don't need a special sake serving set. In fact, most of those ornamental sets aren't good for drinking because you don't get as many aromas.
Store open bottles in the refrigerator, as with wine
Sake will last a little longer than wine, but not much more than a week or so. When I order sake in a Japanese restaurant, I either get a 300 ml bottle or I look at the 1.8-liters to see which bottle has the most sake left in it.
Buying the most expensive sake in the store is not a bad idea
Obviously it depends on how expensive: above about $100, price differences stop mattering. But sake is generally priced by the cost of production, so a $100 sake will be made from rice that is milled more than a $50 sake. I might walk away with a $40 sake I like as well as the $100 sake, but it's a gift, so there's nothing wrong with saying, "I didn't know what to buy so I got you the most expensive one."
Outside Japan, don't spend less than $25
Anything cheaper than that is going to have production corners cut: it might even be made from rice powder.
Don't go for beautiful bottles; that's marketing over substance
I don't want to name brand names here, but you might have seen the ones I'm talking about. The best sakes tend to have simple standard-sized bottles (300 ml, 720 ml or 1.8 L) with Japanese calligraphy on the front label.
Don't sweat it: just buy something
Seriously, I cannot tell you the number of times I have been to dinner with a fellow enophile and we order a $100 bottle of wine from the list and they tell me they have never had a premium sake. You've had Burgundy, Champagne and Napa Cabernet. Now it's time to try the finest beverage made from rice.
Here are the three platinum award-winning sakes from the competition I judged, Sake Selection, that are available in the US.
Nagurayama Yokikana Junmai Ginjo ($40 in New York! Get it while they still have it!)
Sakata Shuzo Joukigen Yamadanishiki Junmai Daiginjo
And here are three widely available personal favorites of mine, so nobody goes empty-handed:
Dewazakura Dewasansan Junmai Ginjo (Green apple fruity; like Collio Pinot Grigio)
Hakkaisan Honjozo (Minerally and refreshing; like Assyrtiko. And cheap)
Masumi Nanago Junmai Daiginjo (Clean yet complex; like good Riesling)
If you want to ask me sake questions, tweet them at me at @wblakegray.
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