If last week was fashion week, this week it was sake’s turn
to sashay down the figurative runway, at the annual Joy of Sake celebration held last night at Chelsea’s Altman Building.
Shuji Abe, of Kokusai Sake Kai, left, and Yasuyuki Yoshida of Tedorigawa Masamune brewery welcome guests. |
About 600 guests ogled and tasted an impressive 370 sakes
from 159 breweries throughout Japan. The event, now in its 11th
year, was inspired by the Honolulu-based Kokusai Sake Kai
(International Sake Group) which in 2001 launched an informal annual sake
appraisal to help promote Japanese sakes to the West. (Judges don’t rank the sakes, but offer gold stars to the ones they like best, and silver to the next highest rated sakes.) From there, it was a
natural step to take the sakes they had judged on the road. This year’s road
trip started in Hawaii in July and from New York will travel to Tokyo, giving
over 3,000 people the chance to taste the best sakes from Japan, some of them
not available outside their mother country.
Haneya Daiginjo |
The sakes set out at the Joy of Sake included aromatic,
gold-starred daiginjos such as the
Kariho Kaei from Akita Seishu Brewery, and the Haneya Daiginjo from Toyama’s Fumigiku
brewery
As the doors opened to guests, Chris Johnson, sake
consultant and self-styled “sake ninja” who created the sake list at branches of the recently opened Cherry in Chelsea and Williamsburg, gave a few words
of advice. Noting that many would want to crowed the tables bearing the most expensive daiginjo bottles, ranked A and B
according to the percentage of the rice kernel that remains after polishing
(the more polished the higher the grade), he suggested that the tables bearing
the ginjo and junmai styles should be mined for their many gems as
well. As Chris Pearce, the organizer of The Joy of Sake, noted, "Many
newcomers to sake go for the daiginjos and ginjos first because of their fruity
aroma." They can understand them as they would wine, while the junmais,
which Pearce said are often more about texture and crispness, can be
harder to relate to. "Over time though," he added, "many people
gravitate to junmai labels."
Not all premium sake needs to be served cold: this Toyo no Aki Junmai dry sake benefits from a little warming up. |
Pearce and many of the sake makers were on hand for another
blow-out sake event, held the night before at chef-owner Marco Moreira’s Union
Square-area restaurant Toqueville. There, guests dined on a ten-course menu
with sake pairings including a pristinely fresh series of nigiri sushi by chef
Masato Shimizu. The most unusual pairing was a rich aged sake from 1997, Kamoizumi “Sachi,” known as a koshu or “old sake.”
Tasting notes at the Toqueville sake dinner. (Photo courtesy of One Five Hospitality) |
Wylie Dufresne, chef of wd~50, put the finishing touches on his sunflower miso, shiitake, daikon and tonburi
tasting, reliably bringing the most exotic ingredient to the party. The tonburi, also known as firebush or common red sage, has seeds that look and
crunch like caviar but taste a little like artichoke. A big fan of sake, Dufresne said, “it goes
well with food at both restaurants (wd~50 and Alder) because they’re
brighter and not super-heavy.” Sakes, in fact, he added, are a lot like his own
food: “clean, well-balanced and with a
good use of acidity.”