With all that’s going on overseas, we hope that our continued posting as usual here helps take some peoples’ minds off of everything. Or at least that this post encourages you to sit back, take a deep breath, and treat yourself to a drink!

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Photo by tokyofoodcast

Sake 酒. It is a word that many of us are familiar with, perhaps too familiar with, and yet the brewing process as well as the differences between types of sake remains a mystery. I for one have always enjoyed drinking sake, but I realized one day when I went to the store to buy a bottle as a gift for a friend that I know very little about it. Thinking I would just be able to run to the store, grab something quick and go, I was brought up short by the incredible wall of choice facing me. There must have been hundreds of bottles! I had no idea where to begin. My curiosity was piqued and I figured that it was time to stop drinking sake indiscriminately and start learning a bit more about the drink that is the pride of the prefecture I live in, Akita.

To begin my quest, I went on a tour of a sake brewery near my small town in Akita, Japan. Akita sake is well known throughout Japan for being especially good. This is probably due to the fact that Akita rice is the best in Japan and sake is a rice wine. The tour was conducted in English and it was a lot of fun to see the giant vats of sake in the different stages of the brewing process. My favorite part of the experience was learning about rice polishing. The degree to which the rice grain is polished determines the style of the sake. I learned a great deal on the tour and it got me thinking that there have to be some good resources about sake on the web which brings us to today’s fun link, Sake World.

Sake World has everything the common man could ever want to know about sake. The website was created by John Gauntner, the leading non-Japanese authority on sake in the world. He has written several books and articles on the topic and he is a certified Master of Sake Tasting. He has also achieved Sake Expert Assessor certification from Japan’s National Research Institute of Brewing. He is the only non-Japanese person to have received both of these certifications.

If you want to know more about how sake is made, the different types of sake, and how to not look like a fool when purchasing sake, this website is the perfect way to get started. I highly recommend it. Kanpai!