Are Sake Labels the Ultimate “No-Entry” Sign to Foreigners?
What happens when you love a drink but can’t read its label?
This is a core conundrum posed by Japanese sake. Faced with highly stylized, impenetrable kanji characters crawling across a label like ancient runes, would-be fans might, the argument goes, just give up on trying to get to know sake better.
But every label has its own story, and if you ask your local sake shop, or do some searching online, or maybe even start studying Japanese in your spare time (!), you’ll start figuring them out. Many are not only beautiful, but also tell compelling stories. You’ll absorb some sake lore and learn something about Japanese history and culture, too. I’m going to tell you a good label story I heard not long ago at a sake dinner at Ki Modern Japanese + Bar in Toronto.
Fourth-generation brewery president Kazuhiro Maegaki of Hiroshima’s Kamoizumi Brewery was in town, presenting his delicious umami-forward sake alongside Keith Norum, a rep for Miyasaka Brewery in Nagano Prefecture, the makers of another stellar import, Masumi.
The story is about Kamoizumi Brewery’s flagship Shusen junmai ginjō label, a rich and mouth-filling brew that pairs well with meaty and/or grilled dishes. I like it because it involves Hiroshima’s key role in innovative brews that were the precursors to both junmai and ginjō sake. The Shusen label is exactly the kind I described above, an abstract, beautifully inked kanji character. It’s so stylized that it wasn’t until Maegaki explained what it was that I recognized the character for alcohol, 酒. In the U.S., Shusen is sometimes referred to as “Three Dot” sake because everyone remembers the ten-ten-ten, or sanzui, the three dashes that form the radical of the character for water.
The expressionistic, almost Jackson Pollock-esque character was inked by a priest named Kamitsukasa Kaiun at Nara’s esteemed Tōdaiji temple in 1972, when Shusen was marketed for the first time. Back then, there was no such thing as junmai-shu (pure undiluted sake) or junmai ginjō (made with highly polished rice and fermented at low temperatures), Maegaki explains. War-time rice shortages had resulted in government orders to farmers to direct their energy into producing table rice, not sake rice. So from 1943 on, in order to cope with rice shortages, makers added generous quantities of brewer’s alcohol to stretch their products, and sweeteners and acidulants to mask the diluted, poor quality of the sake.
The tide began to change around 1965, when Maegaki’s grandfather, Kazusō Maegaki, began experimenting with a pure sake made in the old, traditional way. He dropped the brewer’s alcohol and other artificial additives that had made their way into Japan’s national beverage under the cover of war.
“Today,” says Maegaki, “You would refer to it as junmai-shu, but back then there was no way to differentiate it. During the post-war era most sake rice was polished to a rustic 70 to 80 percent milling ratio (meaning only 20 to 30 percent of the grain was shaved off) and was filtered using charcoal to remove off-flavors and lend a luster to the final product.
Kazusō polished the rice for his experimental sake down further, to a 60 percent milling ratio. And he used no activated carbon, or charcoal, filtration. The proteins that would have produced off-flavors in a lesser sake had been milled off before brewing; doing away with charcoal filtering left the natural umami and richness of the sake gloriously intact. The only thing that came close to it were the rarefied competition sakes of the time, made with highly polished rice and brewed at low temperatures. They were known in Hiroshima as ginzō (吟造) sake, and might be considered an early prototype of ginjō sake. As they developed in Hiroshima, those ginjō sake also demanded special yeasts, typically Yeast № 9. Kamoizumi went on to become a leading maker of this type of Hiroshima ginjō sake.
But back to that first bottle of Shusen. Though Kazusō the elder knew he had created a delicious product, “He didn’t have the confidence to put it on the market,” his grandson explains. Rice had been so expensive up to this point that no brewery, at least in Hiroshima, had yet been able to afford to make a pure, undiluted sake. The brewers, and Maegaki knew it was good; they also knew that it would be new to the sake drinker’s palate and more expensive. They worried that it wouldn’t sell.
It so happened that the aforementioned Tōdaiji priest, Kamitsukasa Kaiun, was also Maegaki’s brother-in-law. Maegaki suggested a trial tasting of the sake at the celebratory induction ceremony of Kaiun as head priest of Tōdaiji’s Kegon Buddhist sect — a major event in the world of Zen Buddhism. Guests included a chef in charge of the banquet that day. He liked it so much he began serving the sake at his renowned Ōsaka restaurant — kind of like Eric Ripert making your wine a staple on the list at Le Bernardin. Shusen was on its way to becoming a landmark sake.
It seemed fitting to put the newly anointed head priest Kaiun’s calligraphy on the label of this new product. But Maegaki thought it a bit too dull to just have the black-and-white character (no offense, Zen austerity); he wanted it to pop on the shelf. So he added the brilliant brushstroke of vermillion across the top, which slowly bleeds into the cream-colored label. The name “Shusen” is a coined word for “vermillion spring,” a poetic reference to the now iconic slash of red across the top.
Today Kamoizumi makes Shusen with Hiroshima’s own original sake brewing rice, Hiroshima Hattan, and locally cultivated Chūnama Shinsenbon rice, milled to a rate of 58 percent. Maegaki doesn’t know what kind of rice his grandfather used back in 1972 — that information has since been lost. He’s experimenting with aging Shusen as well; we tried a one-year-old brew and compared it with a deeply savory and sherry-like 22-year-old bottle, which made the perfect accompaniment for wagyu (Japanese beef).
To remind buyers that this rich, full sake harks back to the purer, unadulterated sakes of old Japan, the label also includes a poem by a mid-Edo period Zen priest, Oshō Ryōkan. In addition to being a priest, Ryōkan was known as a poet and a sake lover. The poem is about a visit Ryōkan made to see one of his disciples. As he readies himself to leave, he utters the following line, which sums up the timeless allure of sake, and the altered states that it can produce:
“I was drunk because the sake you recommended was irresistible.”
An apt line we can all pull out to thank/blame a hospitable friend!