Akashi Tai Tokubetsu Honjozo Sake, 72 cl

Product Information

While people outside Japan are just catching on to the great potential of sake and food matching, it’s a known fact in sake’s homeland that it can all but transform a meal. What’s more, it goes with a variety of dishes beyond what we might think of as its classic partner, sushi. As the Japanese saying goes, “sake and food never fight”. However, when you start to warm it up, the sake opens up and the acidity becomes milder but doesn’t disappear completely. Actually, it was one of the main things I liked about Akashi-Tai Tokubetsu JUnami: its ability to hold acidity even at a high temperature. The warmer sake gets, the more sweetness comes out and the more mouthful it becomes. I liked it best at 50C as Miho san recommended. Located in Hyogo prefecture, Akashi-Tai is a small craft brewery making beside sake Hatozaki whiskey and 135°East gin at its Kaikyo distiller. Despite its modest size, the brewery has a very good presence in the UK. Japan's signature drink has been brewed for around as long as hanami celebrations have existed, with historians dating its invention to the Nara period (710-794), although booze of various forms has been drunk on the island from at least the third century.

Helpful as these categories are, they offer only a vague sense of the breadth and variety available, even within each category. The only way to really find out what you like is to taste broadly and see what lights up your palette. The real pleasure of drinking warm sake is in savouring the complexity of the rice-derived flavour brought out by the heating. Though sake is a drink steeped in ancient Japanese tradition and history, it’s a category that’s not always easily understood outside of Japan. Fortunately, quality, craftsmanship and taste are universal – and Akashi-Tai places all of these at the forefront of its production to create elegant, balanced but characterful sakes. Keeping tradition alive Really, it's the wrong name: the Japanese character for 'sake' just means 'alcohol', "but at some point it got bastardised," says Cheong-Tong. "It should really be called 'nihonshu': 'nihon' meaning Japan, 'shu' is the alcohol of Japan."

today’s innovations are tomorrow’s traditions

Akashi-Tai Tokubestu Junmai is quite pleasant chilled. It has an elegant but subtle aroma with notes of apple, elderflower and rice. The sake is quite acidic and dry with a simple taste, creamy texture and short but pleasant finish. Akashi-Tai Honjozo sake is made to be slightly lighter in style than their other types of sake, using high quality rice and a small amount of brewers alcohol to create a crisp, dry and easy to drink sake. We at Akashi Sake Brewery pride ourselves on maintaining a traditional handcrafted approach to creating the finest Japanese sake. The balance of refined elegance and complexity found in Akashi-Tai range of sakes make them great for drinking on their own, but they also work beautifully when paired with all types of food. As well as being the heartland of sake, Hyogo is also known throughout Japan and beyond for its food culture, making it a global hotspot for gastronomy. This epicurean trait has of course had an influence on the sake the region is known for, and Akashi-Tai is a prime example, having grown up alongside the vivid flavours of one of the world’s most evolved cuisines. Mr Yonezawa says that he is driven by “that moment when food and sake become one, and both are amplified, when the food reveals hidden depths in the sake, and the sake lingers and prolongs the pleasure of the meal”.

Given the region’s reputation for producing sake, it’s no surprise that the brewery is dedicated to deep-rooted brewing traditions and heritage. Akashi-Tai is true artisan sake, handmade in small batches by the toji (or master brewer) Kimio Yonezawa and his close team of trusted craftsmen. But to Akashi-Tai, respecting tradition also means keeping it alive, in an unending quest to challenge and improve throughout every step of the sake-making process. However, when you start warming the sake up, it becomes much more enjoyable. The acidity melts down with the sweetness making the taste more mellow and gentle. The spiciness from alcohol becomes more prominent but without a strong alcohol aftertaste. Each was blind tasted neat to avoid brand bias, then diluted with water to mellow the alcohol and appreciate the more nuanced aromatics at play. Akashi-Tai is named after its home city, where the brewery started life in 1856 and continues to this day. Akashi city is a coastal fishing town in Hyogo Prefecture, which is known as the traditional sake brewing capital of Japan. While a degree of snobbery endures, there's logic behind the idea that you heat cheap sake and chill the expensive stuff. "If you heat fruity, light, floral sake, all you're going to get is alcohol fumes," says Cheong-Thong. Sakes with more body, or bottles which have been open a while, work well warmed to around 50 degrees, as the heat smooths out some of the rougher notes. "The flavours will still be in the sake, although the alcohol hits you first. Also, it's a very good way to liven up slightly stale sake." How we test sakeYou can drink Tedorigawa Yamahai Junmai chilled but it doesn’t give it justice. Made by using a yamahai method, the sake acidity at 1.6 and SMV +2.0. It’s not that aromatic which is normal for junmai sake with gentle green tomatoes, rice, lemon and timber notes. Still, 'sake' will get you what you want both here, and in the bars of Tokyo. The drink is crafted from four ingredients – rice, water, yeast, and the fungus koji-kin (more on which later) – and although it falls in a similar ABV range to wine, it's brewed more like beer.

Polishing is perhaps the key step in defining what kind of sake gets made. It involves stripping away each rice grain's outer husk to reduce down the amount of protein and fat available for fermentation and thus shorten the brewing process. As relevant now as it was then, Akashi-tai continues to be a market-leader and relentless tailblazer of authentic, Japanese sake. If you fancy a taste of something new, or enjoy the odd sake and want a prime example, you’re in the right place. Kanpai! Even the hushed sounds of natural fermentation at work can be heard in the cool, quiet rooms of our brewery." Next you have ginjo, at 60% polishing, and daiginjo, at 50%, both of which can be junmai or not. Here you get more delicacy, with fruit flavours, a smooth mouthfeel and clean aftertaste. Junmai versions ramp up the umami and acidity. How to drink sake Enjoyable either warm or chilled to complement the season, traditional Japanese sake can be savoured across a wide range of temperatures.For example, the company uses the yamada-nishiki variety of rice — a superior strain — grown in the region just north of Akashi. Since then, Akashi have taken pride in brewing sakes with the choicest ingredients, that are more often than not produced locally. The brewery’s proximity to the coast and their insistence of tanks with Japanese cedar wood lids leads to sea air impacting the flavour of Akashi-Tai sakes with a slightly salty and particular character. The key ingredient, however, is the yamada-nishiki variety of rice. Known as a superior strain, it’s native to the region just north of Akashi, and considered for sake production above all else because its starch molecules are loosely grouped. This allows koji mold spores to easily enter the structure, and produce superior koji and malted rice.