Seven Ways to Smell the Roses: Exploring the World of Sake Flower Yeasts
Of all the different kinds of sake yeasts that we’ll be writing about in our book, one of the more romantic varieties are flower yeasts. While most sake is made with sake yeasts that were first isolated in especially delicious tanks of sake, flower yeast come from, well, flowers. Today you can buy and drink sake made with yeasts isolated from sunflower, dianthus, rhododendron, or marigold, among others. Some come from fruiting trees or vines, such as cherry blossom, apple or strawberry.
The majority of flower yeasts now being used in sake making in Japan have come out of one lab, at the Tokyo University of Agriculture. Nodai, as it is known for short, is home to Japan’s best-known brewing and fermentation program. The flower yeast program was led for many years by the late professor Hisayasu Nakata, who was the first person to isolate sake yeast from flowers. Since 2006 professor Takayuki Kazuoka been the flower yeast expert at Nodai. Graduates from their lab include brewers at Amabuki Brewery in Saga Prefecture, Tenju Brewery in Akita Prefecture, and Rihaku Brewery in Shimane Prefecture, who are now the leading producers of flower yeast sakes. One reason the field is dominated by Nodai graduates is that without the Nodai connection it’s hard to get your hands on these yeasts. Isolating and stabilizing them is a long, painstaking process, and few breweries have that kind of time or resources.
Flower yeasts have become the source of commemorative projects, too. To celebrate the end of the Heisei Era in Japan, which spanned the reign of Emperor Akihito, Nodai and a group of alumni created a celebratory flower yeast sake. The project started with a tropical orange-hued rose that was a gift to Princess Michiko from the British royal family in 1966. Kazuoka isolated a yeast that, to everyone’s joy, yielded a lovely floral sake with balanced acidity. Nodai, Kazuoka explains, has historically had close ties with Japan’s imperial family. In part this was because as quasi-gods, a large part of its mandate was to protect the livelihood of the nation’s farmers. The second son of Emperor Akihito and Princess Michiko, Prince Akishino, an ornithologist, has even served as a visiting professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture.
The crowdfunded Princess Michiko rose sake project raised enough money for seven breweries (Nanbu Bijin, Dewazakura, Ichinokura, Asama, Sekiya, Ishizushi, and Sumikawa, all of them headed by Nodai graduates) to each brew 3,000 to 4,000 bottles of prestige sake. They were free to choose the rice variety and brewing style to create their own unique interpretation of the rose flower yeast. The very different and beautiful label choices, as you can see in the above photo collage, also contribute to the personality of the final product. All proceeds go toward helping victims of the spate of natural disasters the country has suffered during the year, including aid to farmers whose fields were flooded.
Not all flower yeasts come out of Nodai, of course. John Gauntner recently reported in Sake Industry News that Honda Shoten in Hyogo prefecture released a tokubetsu junmai sake made with a yeast from the white egret orchid (sagiso鷺草).It’s made under the brewery’s Tatsuriki line. The name “white egret orchid” alone makes me want to taste this sake!
Besides unique aromas, another appeal of flower yeasts is that they can bring a sense of regionality to a sake. The sagiso yeast was developed by the Honda Shoten in collaboration with the pharmaceutical department of Himeji City’s Dokkyo University. Since the sagiso is the official flower of Himeji City, it made sense for the university and the brewery to want to feature it in a sake. The yeast was collected at the Himeji Tegarayama Botanical Garden, and is one of a series of three flower yeast projects the brewery and the university have collaborated on. The two other sakes are made with a cherry blossom yeast taken from a tree at Himeji Castle and a chrysanthemum yeast taken from a flower on the university grounds. But these aren’t just novelty items; making a special flower yeast sake is a chance for a highly skilled brewing team to flex its technical muscles with a new ingredient, and try to coax out novel and delicious expressions to enliven a familiar brand. In other words, always worth checking out.
In the obligaton-fueled world of Japanese omiyage, or gift giving, producing a unique local product (ideally one that poetically expresses the flavor of the region) that visitors can pick up at the local train station and take home with them is a great way for a brewery to extend its product line and boost its hometown. Honda Shoten president Shin’ichiro Honda told Sankei News, “If the set became a gift from Himeji that would make me happy.”
If you should find yourself at Himeji or Kobe train station, who knows, maybe you will see a three-box set of Tatsuriki flower yeast sakes. The seven rose flower yeast sakes are on sale now in Japan (sorry, all of you in other countries :( ), either through the individual brewery websites, select online retailers, or through Nodai’s own business arm, Nodai Support. The company has a store in front of Setagaya-Daita train station near the Nodai Campus where you can pick up some of these special sakes.
If any of you are so lucky as to be able to taste some of these interesting flower yeast sakes, please share your impressions of them with those of us who are still trapped in Covid-19 bondage!
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