If your experience with sake is limited to the warm cup at your local sushi spot, you are missing the larger world of the traditional Japanese drink, which is as nuanced and layered as wine.
Sake is brewed (not distilled) from rice, yeast, water and koji, a mould that converts the rice starch into sugar. Premium sakes might add some distilled alcohol. Sometimes other ingredients are added for flavour, but purists stick to the essentials.
“It’s quite incredible to think of the variation in flavour sake provides, given these constraints,” says Yoko Kumano, who with Kayoko Akabori owns the shop Umami Mart in Oakland, California and wrote the new book, Everyday Sake.
