First came boutique wineries. Then microbreweries and craft distilleries. Now Japanese sake aficionados are hoping to transform the so-called “rice wine” into the next artisan alcohol-of-the-moment in the US.
Dan Ford, whose Maine-made sake is just hitting the market, has bet his retirement savings that consumers will be sold on his premium sake once they give it a try.
“We see it as a market that’s untapped,” said Ford, who developed a taste for sake while working in Japan, then later returned there to learn from a sensei, or teacher, before launching Blue Current Brewery, one of about a dozen craft producers operating — or gearing up to — in North America.
Photo: EPA
Sake has been around for centuries in Japan, but consumption has dropped in recent years. Meanwhile, it is ticking upward in North America, benefiting from the overall popularity of Japanese foods — from ramen and soba to sushi and yakitori — as well as riding the trend of consumers seeking far-flung flavors and artisanal products.
Premium ginjo sake is nothing like the rough-tasting stuff sometimes served warm at low-end sushi shops, craft brewers say.
Top-notch sake — best served chilled — has a clean flavor profile that can be full-bodied and robust or light and fruity, sometimes with a subtle hint of licorice.
“Its depth and subtlety are tops, but the range of flavors that can come from rice, koji, water and yeast are amazing to many. It just tastes darn good,” said John Gauntner, a sake expert from Ohio who has written books on the beverage and has taught sake production in the US and Japan.
Though it is often called rice wine, sake actually is brewed like beer. The rice is milled to remove the husk, then a type of mold called koji is sprinkled into the steamed rice to break starches down into sugar, a process that takes place in a room where the temperature tops 38oC.
The rice and koji are fermented with water and yeast in casks for about 30 days before being pressed, leaving a yellow-hued liquid that looks like huangjiu (黃酒), the Chinese word for “yellow wine,” Ford says.
When it is bottled, it looks like white wine. Unlike wine, though, sake generally is consumed fresh and is not aged for long periods.
Those who love the beverage say further success in the US will require educating consumers. They are also trying to win over those who may have had a bad experience with cheap sake, asking them to give it another try.
As the story goes, sake came to the US when American soldiers stationed in Japan after World War II returned home with a taste for it, prompting Japanese sake makers to open the first US breweries in Hawaii and California.
Blake Richardson’s moto-i in Minneapolis is credited with launching the microbrew trend with the first sake brewpub in the US in 2008.
Richardson, whose sister company is now milling rice for several sake producers, including Blue Current, believes sake will grow as consumers become educated and feel less intimidated by the Japanese characters on bottles.
“We need education to get the terminology correct so they can walk up and say: ‘I’d like a junmai nama genshu,’” he said.
That translates to sake made from rice that is unpasteurized and undiluted.
Meanwhile, restaurateurs are getting more serious about proper pairings.
“Wine sommeliers are getting a taste and realizing where it can fit. It’ll never overtake the wine world, but people are starting to respect it and realizing that it has its place. It has a great fit in the jigsaw puzzle of beer and wine. There is a lot of room for growth,” urbansake.com founder Tim Sullivan said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained