Jizake - Brewed for the gods

December 21, 1996

A Drink From Japan
Brewed for the gods

Rarely found outside Japan, jizake is to ordinary sake as the finest single malt is to rotgut whisky. Where to find it, and how to drink it

"OPEN the bottle and the heart dances as the rich aroma spreads in the air. Crystal beads roll down the anticipating throat, and a round, mellow and palatable sensation runs from head to toe. I savour the time it has waited to bloom." In Japanese, Motoaki Sudoh’s description of a particularly fine sake called Omon Daiginjo is neither flowery nor precious. Serious sake drinkers know exactly what he is talking bout in his column in the magazine Shukan Daiyamondo.

Mr. Sudoh, an artist, writer and bon vivant, is one of Japan’s most famous connoisseurs of jizake—the purest of sakes, with the most delicate of flavours and aromas, painstakingly produced by small local breweries across Japan. Almost never seen outside Japan—and sometimes hard to find even in Tokyo—jizake is as different from the cloying concoction dished up hot in western sushi bars as a Speyside single malt is from an ordinary whisky.

Commercial sake is often served hot—a habit that become popular during austerity years in post-1945 Japan—for good reason: the temperature masks the ugly flavours of it chemical ingredients. So forget those marketing inventions about sake needing to be drunk at body temperature. Let it be said, here and now, that jizake is drunk slightly warmer than a chilled white wine and somewhat cooler than a claret. Around 10-12 degrees centigrade is perfect.

And throw away those wooden boxes (masu) found in Tokyo’s tourist haunts. A small whisky tumbler or sherry glass will do just fine. In the traditional Japanese house his grandfather on the Miura peninsula south of Tokyo, Mr. Sudoh offers jizake to visitors in antique wine glasses, a fresh glass for every drink.

The Omon Diginjo he serves is only one—albeit, a special one—of thousands of jizake brews, each subtly different from the next, and each rarely tasting quite the same twice. One feature of Omon Daiginjo is the way it is stored in a chilly mineshaft in Niigata for at least a year before sale. Few other jizakes are kept that long. Another feature that sets Mr. Sudoh’s tipple apart is the honorific appendage, Daiginjo.

As complicated as its makers
Like all sakes, jizake is an alcoholic berage made from fermented rice. Chemically, it is the most complex of all the world’s alcoholic beverages—far more so than cognze or absinthe—comprising more than 400 different tase components in its delecate palate and bouquet. In Japanese, the word "sake" actually means any alcoholic drink. The formal name for the brewknown as refined sake is seishu, and the common name nihonshu (Japanese sake) is generally used to distinguish it from yoshu (western liquor). Jizake simply means local sake.

For taste as well as taxation reasons, most jizakes have an alcoholic content of around 15-16%, though the raw sake produced at the end of the fermentation process has as much as 20% alcohol. Bottle for bottle, sake is about one and a half times stronger than wine and has three to four times the punch of beer.

Among the jizake, the simplest—and for some the most honest of all rice wines—are the junmai (or pure rice) brews. Unlike the commercial brands of sake that adulterated with flavouring agents and preservatives as well as extra alcohol, junmai is pure sake with nothing added other than rice, water, yeast and a mysterious ingredient known as koji (of which more later). With robust personalities of their own, the junmai—heavier, fuller-flavoured and slightly more acidic than finer brews—are not to everyone’s taste.

Next come the ginjo sakes, which are brewed from only the most carefully selected ingredients. A small quantity of brewer’s alcohol is often added in the final stages of the brewing process to lighten the sake’s flavour and enhance its nose. Ginjo sakes tend to be drier and to have a more delicate flavour all round. Lastly, there are the majestic daiginjo sakes, literally the "greatest" of the most carefully selected brews: veritably, the nectar of the gods.

Apart from variations in the brewing process, what separates the equivalent of the premiers crus (ginjo and up) from the deuxiemes and table wines (junmai and down) is the polishing done to the rice beforehand. To make a clean, fresh-tasting sake, the outer portion of the rice grain that contains all the fats, proteins, minerals and amino acids must be removed before the brewing can start. Only the inner kernel of pure carbohydrate is used for serious sake-making. To produce a junmai, at least 30% of the grain ahs to be polished away. For ginjo, 40% or more is discarded. And for a daiginjo, at least 50%. Some of the finest daiginjo sakes start with grains of rice with as much as 65% of their mass removed.

The type of rice is another key factor. Some 60-odd varieties have been approved by the Japanese brewing authorities for making sake, though only 20 or so are in use today. All tend to have a much loarger grains size than table rice, and have their starch concentrated at the centre instead of being spread though out the grain. All of them are rather tasteless to eat, being bred solely for turning starch into alcohol. They are also tricky to grow, needing more water and nurturing than ordinary rice. Their heavy grains cause the plants to droop, leaving them vulnerable to being flattened and lost in the first heavy downpour.

One of the most popular varieties for makein expensive jizake is a rice called Yamada Nishiki ("Mountain Paddy Brocade") that is grown largely in Hyogo and Okayama in sunnier western Japan. Another popular sake rice is Gohyaku-mangoku ("Five Million Bales") which comes from the somewhat cooler climes of Ishikawa, Toyama and Niigata on the Japan Sea side of the country. A third is Miyama Nishiki ("Beautiful Mountain Brocade") form the harsher north-east around Akita and Yamagata or from the alpine villages of Nagano. Such rices can endow a sake with the hint of apples, oranges, bananas and even nuts.

And, as with whisky and beer, there is the quality of the water to consider. The brews come form places that have clear mountain water or fresh spring water. Medium or hard water with a modest mineral content is preferable; water containing iron is useless. In brewing terms, the water needed for making sake lies midway between the soft water of Pilsner beer and the hard water of Munich beer. By popular agreement, the finest water comes from Rokko Mountains in Hyogo prefecture.

In eastern Japan, around Tokyo and especially farther up in Tohoku, food tends to be seved saltier than in the west of the country around Osaka and Hyogo. Mr Sudoh, gourmet and jizake critic, believes the extra salt in the diet in eastern Japan is a way of compensating for the softer water (with a lower sodium, calcium and magnesium content) that local people have drink. Conversely, the sweeter food in the west reflects the harder drinking water. "Drink you local sake," concludes Mr. Sudoh. "It is what your palate craves—and complements the local dishes on the table." The Japanese are blessed with some 2,200 breweries around the country producing jizake to every conceivable taste.

Though not as ingrained in the myths and mists of time as wine or beer, sake can trace its origins to the 3^rd century AD, when references to kuchikami no sake ("chewing-in-the-mouth sake") first appeared in the Japanese islands. The Chinese compound character for sake comprises ideograms for water and an autumn harvest jar.

As for where sake came from, nobody is quite sure. Rice wines have been made for aeons in China and elsewhere in the monsoon belt, where rice has been cultivated since at least 300BC. But such beverages tend to have a consistency and colour akin to sherry rather than the clarity of mountain water. The purity associated with sake seems to have been largely a Japanese innovation—although, from what little is know about early sake making in Japan, today’s imbibers would shudder at the thought. Before the catalyzing affects of yeast were discovered, villagers would chew a mouthful of rice, millet and chestnuts and spit the soggy mass into a communal tub, where it was left to ferment into a woozy drink for religious purposes.

Process with care
Sake making has come a long way since then. Apart from the adoption of yeast, the big discovery over the past four centuries has been the role of koji—a special mould used in the early stages of the process. Technically speaking, jizake—indeed, all sakes from cooking plonk (mirin) to ceremonialliquor (kinpun-iri)—are not rice wines but rice beers. The difference is important, adding to both the cost and complexity of production. Whereas wine makers can start their fermentation process immediately, thanks to the sugary juice from the pressed grapes, beer and sake brewers must first turn the starch in the barley and rice into sugar ("saccharification").

Brewing beer is relatively simple process: first, malt is used turn the barley starch into sugar; then yeast is added to the wort to hurry along the fermentation. Sake brewing is vastly more complicated. Apart from the difficulty of trying to make an extraordinary clean "beer" with an alcohol content up to 20%, what makes sake production the most complex brewing process in the world is that both saccharification and fermentation are done in the same vessel at the same time.

First, the polished rice is washed and then steeped in water (for anything from a few minutes for a fine ginjo to 18 hours for cheap commercial brews) before being steamed in a large vat. This is one of the trickier bits, because the water content and texture of steamed rice determines exactly how much koji mould will penetrate the rice kernels and work its magic.

After cooling, a portion of the rice is spread on wooden trays, to become koji. It is inoculated with spore of Aspergillum oryzae—a micro-organism that produces the enzymes needed for converting rice starch into fermentables sugars—and the culture is left to grow at a temperature of 30-40 degrees centigrade for two or three days. Every two hours, day and nigh throughout the sake-brewing months of November to April, the koji master at a jizake brewery must religiously tend his batches of culture. So demanding is koji making that commercial sake firms have machines for mass-producing it. But if sake lovers agree on anything (and few do) it is that hand-made koji is what jizake is all about.

With the koji ready and the rice prepared, the skae making can commence. Henceforth, the brewmaster must look after his fermentation tank as though it were a new-born child. He must sniff, taste, watch, listen and feel the brew day and night. Beyond that he must be ready, with a sixth sense acquired through years of apprenticeship and experience, to gauge when something may be going amiss.

To start with, he prepares a small amount of seed material, using the boiled rice, koji and water, into which some sake yeast is added. The purpose of this is to create a concentration of yeast cells ready for the main mash process. The mash is transferred into the main fermentation tank in which the rest of the sake brewing process then takes place.

On the day that brewing begins a third of the ingredients—steamed rice, koji and water—is added to the fermentation vessel. On the second day, another third is stirred into the mash. Nothing is added on the following day, while the brew is allowed to dance ("odori"). Finally, on the fourth day, the remaining ingredients are poured into the tank and the mixture is left to bubble awa for anything from 18 to 32 days, depending on the quality of the sake being made. While a thich forth forms as the saccharification and fermentation proceed apace, the brewmaster keeps the mash at a constant temperature—somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees centigrade, depending on the kind of jizake he has in mind.

When judged ready, the mash is removed from the fermentation tank and pressed, with the lees being removed (and sold to pickle makers) and the remaining liquid left to stand for at least ten days. When no more bubbles rise to the surface and the last of the residual reactions have taken place, activated charcoal is sprinkled into the brew and the blackened liquid run through a filter. Again, great skill is needed in using the charcoal to strip away unwanted flavours while leaving behind all the special tastes and fragrances desired.

After being stored for a further 40 days, the raw sake is pasteurized—by; heating it briefly to 65 degrees—centigrade—and allowed to mature for anything up to six months. (Japanese sake makers were pasteurizing their brews 300 years before Louis Pasteur discovered a similar process for preserving milk and wine.) The matured sake is then blended with other batches to achieve some consistency, and finally diluted with water to reduce the brew’s naturally occurring alcohol content of 20% to a more palatable 15% or so. Just before being shipped to the wholesaler, the sake is pasteurized again to kill any remaining bacteria and ensure a reasonable shelf-life. The first of the jizakes usually find their way on to the shelves in October, almost a year after rice was harvested. Unlike wine, the earlier they are drunk, the better.

As with the "real ale" movement in Britain and the "micro-breweries" of America, there has been growing appreciation of nama-biiru (fresh beer) in Japan. This is beer that is still "alive," having been filtered but not pasteurized. Similarly, unpasteurized nama-zake (fresh sake) has also begun to gain a following. Although it has to be refrigerated and drunk within a week of purchase, nama-zake has an undeniable freshness and character all of its own—offering usually a slightly sweeter and more citrus-like flavour than pasteurized sake. One of the ultimate experiences is to savour a fragile nama-daiginjo. For a brief moment, like the cherry blossom in late March, it presents a breath-taking flowery display before fading too quickly away.

So, how to pick a delicious jizake? Nothing beats long hours with a knowledgeable friend in a good jizake pub, perhaps in the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo. Even so, as with wine, a useful place to start is with the label. For those with a smattering of Japanese, the region and type of rice are the two most obvious things to note. In themselves, they say little about the sake’s character, but they help jizake drinkers to identify particular flavours and fragrances which they may wish to revisit again and again.

Easier to spot, and probably more useful, are three particular numbers that should be (though not always are) on a jizake label. The first is the alcohol content, with 15% to 15.5% suiting most tastes. The kick of a specially brewed 18% ginjo is impressive, but not something to be enjoyed over a meal or an evening conversation.

Next comes the acidity level, a simple figure in the 1.0-2.0 range acting partly as a measure of the sake’s dryness but more as a sign of the flavours to expect. The acidity is affected by the type oyeas used as well as the style of brewing. The more robust flavours of the junmai-style sakes tend to be at the top end of the acidity scale (2.0), while the more subtle flavours of the ginjo and daiginjo sakes are nearer the bottom (1.0).

Most important of all is the nihonshu-do (Japanese sake degree)—a number with a plus or minus sign in front of it. This is in effect the specific gravity of the drink, and thus a measure of how much of the sugars created by the koji have been turned into alcohol. The more complete the conversion, the lighter—and thus drier—the sake. The scale usually ranges from -3 to +10, with the sweeter sakes being in the negative territory. Today, a jizake of +5 is considered a pleasantly dry drink, with +1 being about neutral and -3 rather sweet.

Sweet and dry
But tastes change. It is only since the 1980s that sakes have on average become drier. From the early 1950s to the late 1970s, people were drinking their sake much sweeter, the average nihonshu-do for the period being around -5. That is nothing compared with what it was like during the 1930s, with the sweetness of the sake swung all the way to -11 after having been +17 n the latter parts of the last century. Why such swings? Shinya Kobayashi, head of the taxation agency’s National Research Institute of Brewing, outside Hiroshima, believes that the nihonshu-do follows the swings of the country’s economic cycle: the sweeter (and cheaper) sakes are more common when times are hard.

Another mark of quality on a sake label is the presence or otherwise of a gold or silver medal. For taxation purposes, sake used to be graded as Special Class, First Class and Second Class, with the highest duty being charged on the best. The system was changed in 1989, party as a result of pressure from France, indignant about the stiffer duty Japan imposed on imported wine and spirits. But the grading system—in which the breweries submitted their brands for approval in one or other of the taxation agency’s three classes—had long been abused. Breweries that produced some of the finest sakes either never bothered entering them for grading or passed them off as Second Class, knowing they could sell all they produced.

Today, irrespective of quality, the duty on sake is set at 140.5 yen ($1.23) a litre, plus an extra 9.4 yen for every extra percentage point in alcohol content above 15%. Instead of grading sakes by their acclaimed quality, Mr. Kobayashi’s research institute now hands out gold and silver medals after grueling rounds of in-house panel tastings. Of the 277 sakes that were awarded gold medals this year, the prefecture that collected the most was Niigata with 25 golds, followed by Akita with 18 and Nagano with 17.

Apart from each having many small and interesting sake breweries, the common thread uniting the prefectures is bleak weather in winter. Perhaps, like the single malts from the Spey or the extraordinary ice wines from the Rheingau, the finest jizakes of Japan need a touch of adversity—but also, of course, the benevolent eye of the gods. Kanpai.

For more information on sake, visit the Info Sake Magazine web page.

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Updated January 17, 1997

Updated January 17, 1997