sake master blog
Hello,
I am so sorry that I haven't updated my blog for a while.. It has been a crazy busy year for me already.. Pleas let me update a few things about my sake world in Melbourne.
1: Mon 22 & Tue 23 March, Sake Tasting Event
"DISCOVER THE JOY OF SAKE" @Nihonshu Sake & Shochu Bar, 163 Lonsdale St (Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.)
Seven sake tasting & 3 matching food with Toshi Maeda & Andre Bishop's Sake Lesson for $70
Booking Essential (Limited Seats Only) Call 9663 8118 or email to
info@nihonshu.com.au asap!
2: Choya Umeshu New Products -
Green Tea Flavoured Umeshu & Brown Sugar Flavoured Umeshu has introduced in Sake Japan. The products will be updated this week!
3:
Ippongi Kome Kome Shu - Finish production. Only 8 bottles left. Be Quick!
4:
Koshinohatsuume Karakuchi Honjozo HACHIKARA - One of the best dry, light, crisp Honjozo from Niigata is now available at MAEDAYA as a part of our sake tasting flight special. Don't miss it! It is so smooth just like pure snow water!
5: I have been working on a
THE FIRST SAKE MASTER PROMO VIDEO. It should become available to be watched online around mid March.
I will keep updating the news more often from now on!
Today, Daiwa Food introduced MAEDAYA 2 new sake botlles freshly arrived from Japan. One is RANMAN TENSHINRANMAN & the other is TATEYAMA GINREI FUTSUSHU. They are both FUTSUSHU but the quality is as good as to be categorized in HONJOZO.
Here is my brief tasting notes for both bottles
1: RANMAN TENSHINRANMAN 1800ml
Fragrance is a bit strong to your nose. At the first sip, sweetness & richness of rice spread all over your mouth and soon light dryness follows up and ending with a bit of acidity. It has a medium rich body and depth in a flavour with a hint of Banana, very typical Ranman style.
2: TATEYAMA GINREI FUTSUSHU 1800mlFragrance is very light. Soon after you sip it, you would see soft, light & dry flavours with a crisp finish. You might think it's not so inpressive at the begining but if you want to drink sake with a meal for a long time, you would need sake like this. It woould never get you bored of it even after a half bottle. Its very typical Tateyama style as well.
Soon, you could drink these sake anywhere in Melbourne, some parts of Brisbane & Adelaide. Please ask for it when you go to your favorite Japanese restaurant. They are worth trying, I reckon.
Last night, I was invited to the Sake tasting party at my friend K’s. He prepared a lot of dishes such as Sashimi, roast duck & Japanese hot pot Yosenabe for us to match with Sake. Much appreciated. Another friend H san brought 2 Sake bottles from Japan. One is called
KAMOSHIBITO KUHEIJI JUNMAI GINJO from Aichi and the other one is
MIKOTSURU JUNMAI from Nagano. Actually I heard good things about KUHEIJI from H san and also I had an inquiry about it from Sake Japan customer before so I was especially excited to try this sake.
We had a bit of beer and sashimi to start the party and soon after, we opened a cap of KUHEIJI first. H san poured KUHEIJI into my sake tasting cup then I tasted it immediately. The first impact in my mouth was just SENSATIONAL!
This sake wasn’t like any traditional sake I have tasted before. It has a bit of pineapple or some sort of sweet citrus fragrance and full of sweetness but not sticky at all. Maybe because of a good amount of acidity, the sweetness is cut off naturally at the end. I tasted it one more time by using a wine glass and I found there was a bit of milky fragrance too maybe made from lactic acid. After 2nd tasting, confidently I thought
this Sake is taste like white wine such as aged Riesling without petrol fragrance. H san told me that Sake Artist of this sake, KUHEIJI san visited a lot of French restaurants in Paris by himself to promote his sake. Now a few restaurants in Paris are using this Junmai Ginjo in their restaurants! I can understand his approach of Sake towards the western dishes and I am sure this one may match well with western dishes especially light flavoured seafood dishes. (Indeed it was very well matching with salmon & snapper sashimi!)
Soon after, H san told us that we should open the other bottle MIKOTSURU as a comparison. MIKOTSURU is more like a traditional style Junmai with light flavour, clean & smooth touch medium dry sake. It was a little bit quiet after sensational KUHEIJI but still MIKOTSURU is very well balanced good sake. We decided to warm up this one to match with Yosenabe hot pot and indeed it worked perfectly together.
I thanked so much to K san & H san for this great experience and now I thought I must try my hardest to bring KAMOSHIBITO KUHEIJI into Australia to share this feeling with everyone. It was just
SENSATIONAL!
http://www.tutitatu.com/sake/kamosibitokuheiji.html
In Melbourne, it’s getting cold in night time these days. Warm sake (Atsukan) is a perfect choice simply to warm yourself up. Do you know some sake is suitable for warm up and some is not really for it?
If you are drinking high quality sake such as Ginjo or Daiginjo with a beautiful fragrance, layers of richness & a lot of flavour, I recommend you to drink it in cold or room temperature. Only because once you heat up sake, a fragrance and some of flavour will be changed or faded by evaporation and its taste won’t be as same as its supposed to be.
On the other hand, if you are drinking more reasonable priced sake such as Honjozo or Junmai and if you want to have a taste with more body, impact and dryness, you can heat it up and drink warm or hot. Once you heat up sake, the taste gets more impact and mostly it gets dryer.
To heat up sake at home, you can simply pour sake in coffee cup and microwave it for 1~2mins. Otherwise, you can pour sake into a small sake bottle and leave it in heated water (60~80 degrees) for 1~2mins. Thing is you can control the taste of warm sake by heating time. Every minute changes sake taste dramatically so please try it in a different temperature and find out a profundity of warm sake.
Sake Master's Recommended Warm Sake
1:
Hatsumago Tokubetsu Honjozo Mineno Sekkei2:
Suishin Junmai Bunano Shizuku3:
Tateyama Ginrei HonjozoHappy Warm Sake Sipping (⌒0⌒)／
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