In Vino Veritas

Tom Waites tells us, “there ain't no Devil, there's only God when He's drunk.” Maybe, maybe not, but Bacchus in the West and Matsuo-sama in Japan have ensured that both wine and sake have mythological status as drinks of the gods.

Wine and sake hold equivalent places in their two separate parts of the world; they are the Ying and Yang of world drinks.

They each occupy places close to the centre of their respective cultures. Sake is used in a great many Shinto rites, while wine is part of the Christian communion. Wine fuelled the Roman conquest of its empire, but is now attributed the abilities (with some justification) to stave off heart disease and cancer. Once upon a time, wine was thought to protect you from the plague too, but KS was unable to test its efficacy in this respect.

Yet, while wine and sake are the alcoholic staples for a great many people, they have both spawned seemingly arcane cultures of consumption and production that leave many of us simple folk baffled. For the real connoisseurs, these two drinks can be the object of obsession, fetish even. These people find unlikely flavours and nuances that many of us can't detect, and the producers micromanage the brewing process with an attention to detail that would shame Michaelangelo.

This month, when the sun comes out and Bacchanalian frolics under cherry trees are de rigueur, and at a time when wine is undergoing a rennaissance, KS offers a brief guide to the mysteries of tasting and buying both wine and sake.

A smooth guide to wine

Chocolate, plum, blackberries, strawberries; smoke, tobacco, wet earth, cinnamon, and spice; lemon, lime, melon, pear, grapefruit, almonds; miso, vanilla and toast ...
If you guessed that I was free associating with food flavors you'd be wrong, but not completely wrong. Wine lovers use these words to describe the mysterious experience of wine tasting.

“But wait!” you think, “I've never tasted any of these flavors in my glass of wine!” Chances are, certain flavors were there, but you didn't stop to notice them. Wine tasting requires an element of creativity, it requires that you develop a taste-smell sense of imagination.

Wine ranks among the world's most complex drinks because of its amazing global diversity. Grapes grow in various regions on almost every continent. Grapes from each growing region have unique character beca- use of varying soil composition and climate factors. Rainwater, minerals, sunlight, and farming techniques contribute to the ideal wine grape.

After the grape is picked, the winemaker has his or her cache of winemaking techni-ques to craft a unique, well-balanced wine. The winemaker calculates every imaginable variable including: the time of day the grapes are picked, what yeasts are used in fermen-tation, what barrels are used, are they new or old, French or American, and how long the wine is aged in the barrel, to name a few.

Perhaps the most important factor in determining the character of wine is the grape variety, or varietal. The most simple division of varietals is 'red vs. white'. Some wines are blended and others are made from a single varietal. The label might name the varietal, but in the case of France you have to know. Bordeaux wine is always a blend of several varietals, for example Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. Burgundy wine (Bourgogne) is always made from a single varietal — 100 percent Pinot Noir for reds or 100 percent Chardonnay for whites. Check out the varietal sidebar to learn about the general characteristics of the most popular kinds.

It's also important to take a look at the vintage and appellation — year of production and place of origin. Most wines taste best within the first five years after bottling, espe-cially if you buy a cheaper wine. In general, red wines benefit more from aging than whites. The particular weather of a given year is also an important factor. Because weather varies from places to place, certain growing regions produce better wines. Wine magazines usually have vintage charts, which rank the vintage according to appellation. I recommend Wine Spectator (www.winespectator.com).

Elements of Wine Tasting

Now the fun begins. If you're drinking white, chill it. If you're drinking red serve it at room temperature. Fill the glass at most one third full. No more than one third! You want there to be enough room to swirl the wine around. Swirling is not a pretentious gesture, it increases the surface area, thereby intensi-fying the aroma.

Hold the glass by the stem and examine the color. Don't hold it by the bulb — this leaves ugly fingerprints and your body heat will warm up a chilled wine. Allow light to shine through the glass, while looking at it against a white background. Think about the color — how would you describe it? Ruby red? Blood red? Straw? Golden?

Bring the glass to your nose. Swirl the wine and sniff. Try sniffing quickly. What do you notice? Now try slowly smelling while inhaling deeply. What do you smell? Use your imagination. Don't limit yourself. Even terms like 'petrol' or 'pencil lead' are considered valid (and desirable) descriptors of certain wines. The aroma of a wine is referred to as its bouquet.

Finally take a sip. Let it flow over your tongue and note the sensation. Is it thick and oily? Thin and watery? Tangy and Acidic? Swish the wine around your mouth. Let your entire palate interact with it. What fruit flavors do you detect? Apple? Plum? What secondary flavors do you taste? Vanilla? Smoke? It all depends on the wine. Swallow … how does the flavor linger? Does it die off? Does it persist? This is called the finish, which may be long or medium, may have hints of vanilla. One last recommendation — when you drink wine, take note of the vintage. Taking a moment to consider what you were doing when the wine was bottled will add an interesting historical perspective.

Grape Varietals

Reds

Whites

Sake and the drunken whale

Rejoice! You are in Japan — better still, you're in the Kansai — and you can walk into pretty much any alcohol-selling convenience store or local granny 'n' grandpa liquor store with a very good chance of getting your hands on a bottle of sake that ranks in the top 15 percent of all sake currently existing on the planet. Exaggerating? No, the four small bottles of sake shown in the photos were all bought at local Kansai convenience stores. None cost more than ¥600, and each makes it comfortably into that top 15 percent of sake presently known to human mortals.
The magic words here are jun'mai ginjo, which you can find on the labels of three of these four sake bottle labels. Jun'mai means “pure rice” and ginjo is a brewing category that can be expressed as “premium grade.” Basically, if a brewer can legally put the words jun'mai ginjo on the label of the bottle, you can be sure they will — and prominently. If you find these magic words on the label of a sake, and that sake is being refrigerated, you've found a beverage that isn't all that different from what the Emperor drinks. Well, that's exaggerating, but only slightly.

Only a little over 10 percent of all sake made can be labeled jun'mai ginjo, pure-rice, premium-quality sake. “Pure rice,” naturally enough, refers to sake that uses only rice and water as ingredients. Jun'mai sake labels will list only two ingredients: rice and rice koji, which is a specially cultivated brewing yeast (scientifically known as aspergillus oryzae). Lower grades of sake will include distiller's alcohol and other nasty things like flavorings, sugar, and razor blades (OK, not razor blades).

Actually, a small amount of distiller's alcohol is not all that bad sometimes. One of these four sakes shown here contains it. It's used to preserve the sensitive and delicate sake flavors. But still, pure rice sake is the safest bet for purists and non-purists alike. Very low grades of sake use distiller's alcohol to stretch out the amount of sake-like beverage that can be obtained from actual sake, a practice that originated in wartime shortages of rice. Why this practice continues is a mystery, but probably has something to do with a word that starts with “p” and ends with “-rofit.”

The ginjo part of jun'mai ginjo refers to a legally defined classification, which stipulates that at least 40 percent of the rice is polished off. This leaves each grain of rice as a small ball containing the clean precious starches of the inner 60 percent or less of the original grain of rice. For the next highest grade of sake, dai-ginjo, at least half of the rice must be milled away. (If you're thinking that all this polishing away of the rice is wasteful, it's not. The milled-off rice powder
is used in a number of ways, ranging from livestock feed, cosmetics, sweets and crackers, even as an ingredient for low-grade sake.)

So if you're not a sake convert, or if you've had bad experiences with low-grade sake that tasted like paint stripper, you really should give the good stuff another chance. Go to the liquor store refrigerator and find a bottle with the words jun'mai ginjo on the label. You'll find bottles that aren't any more expensive than a good brand of beer or a decent wine. Be sure to drink it chilled. In winter, warming the bottle in the traditional way in hot water will make a nice drink to toast with and be toasted by. But if you want to experience the true range of flavors of good sake, you'll enjoy it chilled. You'll notice that the even the same sake changes flavor as it changes temperature. And for a beverage that is made purely from rice, there can be incredible hints of aromatic flavors such as melon and peach.

Another enjoyable aspect of sake is the labeling. The calligraphy
and artwork on sake bottle labels show the best of Japanese pack-aging, which is always over the top by world standards anyway. And the names of the sakes often have curious beginnings. “Tama no hikari” is based on the name of a shrine in Wakayama prefecture where this brewery, which relocated to Kyoto after the war, first started out in 1673. The sake called “suigei” (written with the chara-cters for “drunk” and “whale”) is apparently based on the self-given nickname of pre-Meiji feudal lord from Tosa province (now Kochi prefecture) who called himself “Drunken Lord of the Whale Seas.”

Although sake is made in every part of Japan (except the shochu stronghold of Kagoshima), the Kansai area, particularly Kobe and Kyoto, have some of the oldest and best breweries in the land. In Kobe, a visit to the Hakutsuru brewery museum is a must. This muse-um shows clearly the care and dedication that has been given to brew-ing technologies over the centuries. It seems perfectly natural that the Japanese have since then been able to take on less complicated technologies like semi-conductor chips and liquid crystal displays.

In Kyoto there are two brewery museums in Fushimi within walking distance from each other. The Kizakura brewery is worth it just for their hilarious collection of sake TV commercials from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The Gekkeikan brewery costs ¥300 to visit, but you also get a small souvenir bottle of good sake along with your entrance ticket, and they have free tasting inside.

While you're in Japan, it's important to remember the words of
the Meiji era visionary Sakamoto Ryoma: “It's good to drink sake. Drink sake.”

Wine text: Chris Batchelder
Sake text & photos: Kevin Kirton