Sake Tasting Evening

I know I have posted about Sake before, but I have a great excuse to post about it again. I recently attended an evening called 'Japan, Endless Discovery through Sake' which was hosted by the Japan Tourist Bureau (JTB) here in Sydney.

The evening started off with Taiko drummers and then moved on to some speeches about sake and its history. One thing I didn't know is just how long the Japanese have been making sake - some 2,000 years!

This is a map of Japan showing where all of the brewers were located and the sake they make.

There were 6 sake breweries which were represented by the owners or managers of each company. What was really impressive is that one of the breweries was represented by the owner and president who is the 11th generation to own the brewery. Each representative also wore a jacket which showed the brewery they represented and their logo. I just love this part of Japanese culture. They are so proud to show people who they work for and the respect they have for the past by continuing the tradition of wearing the company jackets.

Each of the brewery's representative got up to introduce themselves, gave us a brief history of their brewery and explained the type of sake the make.

The last sake brewer to introduce themselves was Hakushika. This company had their brewery damaged in the devastating tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011. True to the Japanese spirit, he told the audience that they are getting on with making sake and are putting the tsunami behind them.

All of the sake was really nice and a lot better then the bottles of sake I had previously been drinking!

There were some surprises in some of the flavours we tried. The Hakutsuru brewery in particular has modernised their sake. They offer citrus flavoured sake (lemon), sparkling sake and sake infused with plum flavour. These were my favourite flavours of the night. Here is a link to their website: http://www.hakutsuru-sake.com/top.html

Some of the sake types on offer. I sampled them all!

The Dassai brewery offered beautiful crisp tasting sake which I couldn't get enough of! Here is a link to their website: http://asahishuzo.ne.jp/en/ The representatives of Dassai were really nice and liked to have a laugh with me and I even got one of the guys to 'Kampai' (cheers) with me. I introduced myself to the managing director Mr Kazuhiro Sakurai and I told him that I hope to visit his brewery next time I am in Japan. He handed me his business card and told me I would be welcome any time. I was pretty happy with that!

The night was so much fun. I got to mingle with Japanese people from both Australia and Japan and I learnt a lot about Sake. I hope to see more of the citrus and sparkling sake in restaurants and liquor shops in the future.

If you have a chance to sample some sake at an event like this, you must do it as I promise you, it will be a much better quality than you are probably used to.

I hope the JTB hosts more events like this so more Australians can discover all that Japan has to offer.

G