Restaurants

Sugar and rice and all things nice

I’m picking at a sea bream, seated on the floor with my long legs tucked beneath me like badly folded origami, wearing a samurai hat made out of newspaper. In this undignified pose, the fine distinctions between junmai ginjo, dai-ginjo and lesser sakés are being explained to me. ‘Kampai!’ says my host, as yet another flask of premium saké is poured into my cup. I can see it’s going to be a long night.

It used to be that saké scholars would have to travel to Japan, in my case the Iinuma Honke saké brewery in the Chiba Prefecture, in order to further their appreciation of the drink. Ten years ago, Londoners might have been able to find expense account sakés in the sort of Japanese restaurants frequented by oriental businessmen, or warmed-up, low-grade versions in Japanese cafés. Now several London restaurants have gone as far as installing ‘saké sommeliers’ to guide interested customers through ever-expanding selections.
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Zuma stocks around 40 different sakés

Sayaka Watanabe, a trained saké expert from Tokyo, was London’s first saké sommelier when she started work at Zuma restaurant in March 2003. Zuma is one of a new wave of fashionable Japanese restaurants, and stocks around 40 sakés. Although, like many Japanese people, she uses the term ‘rice wine’ to describe saké, the refined rice is in fact brewed in a process more akin to beer-making (see box, ‘How it’s made’). ‘It’s not wine, because the brewing process is quite different, but it’s the simplest way of explaining it to customers. In alcoholic strength [typically 14-16 per cent] it’s closest to wine, and the subtleties of flavour are similar.’ Having a saké sommelier was clearly a success, as Watanabe was joined by an assistant, Satomi Okubo, in 2005; she is also a trained saké expert. Over the course of a week, the two of them will help nearly a third of customers choose saké to go with their meal; most of the rest still order wine. ‘When I started two years ago, I found most non-Japanese customers didn’t even know what saké was. But things have changed a lot in two years; I even get customers coming in asking for specific brands or styles.’

Saké comes in many guises. There are unpasteurised sakés that are milky in appearance, and saké styles range from light and refreshing to aged and slightly oxidised. But in general, the most popular sakés are delicately aromatic and resemble white wines, but with a different spectrum of aromas, broadly similar to lighter sauvignon blancs. Sakés also vary from slightly sweet to very dry.

Watanabe trained in Japan, but the majority of London’s saké sommeliers are French wine waiters who have discovered saké appreciation through wine. ‘The style and character of wine and saké are similar,’ says Matthieu Garros, wine sommelier turned Umu restaurant’s saké sage. ‘We even use the same words to describe them: punchy, dry, fruity, lively. If you understand wine, you can understand saké.’