In many ways, sake production and winemaking couldn’t be more different — from the chemistry to the differences in how their industries are structured. One of the most striking differences usually stems from the role and value placed on their raw ingredients. With winemaking, much emphasis is put on the grapes and where they are grown, and wineries take many pains (and investments) to cultivate their own vineyards at the highest levels of quality they can. This, of course, gives rise to a turn of phrase that is both true and also horribly cliched at this point: our wine is made in the vineyard, not in the cellar.

Sake makers on the other hand generally emphasize the particular qualities of their spring water, and with good reason, as sake, like wine is mostly water. But where wine gets its water from grapes, sake most often gets its water from artesian wells or springs that are safely guarded on the grounds of the sake breweries.

You don’t hear sake makers bragging about their rice very often. This stems from two primary facts about sake production. Firstly, most fine sake is made from a single strain of genetically cloned rice known as Yamada Nishiki. And secondly, during the production process, a large portion of the rice kernel (and the part that most likely evidences the greatest signature of its terroir, so to speak) is polished away to the point that the remaining product is nearly pure starch.

Interest in different rice varieties, as well as a greater attention to where and how sake rice is grown continues to increase in Japan, both in terms of the marketing potential of such information, but also in the hands of dedicated small brewers who are genuinely interested in trying to make better and better sake.

Marumoto is one such brewery that has decided that it can make the best sake by controlling every aspect of production, including the growing of all its own Yamada Nishiki rice on the premises (as opposed to small grower collectives, which are another way that breweries can exert a little more control on the growing process).

The Marumoto brewery was founded on its current site in Okayama prefecture in the year 1867. It is currently run by the sixth generation of the Marumoto family, though it has come to be known by consumers more as the name of its premium sake line “Chikurin” than by the name of the family that still makes the sake.

The Chikurin line of sakes was introduced in 1990 and found rapid commercial success, thanks to the exacting quality standards that go into its production, and of course the fact that the sakes are damn tasty. The Chikurin lineup consists of three sakes Taoyaka (grace), Fukamari (depth), and this sake Karoyaka, or “lightness.”

Each is made from the estate grown rice, with the brewery’s spring water, which is well known in the region and responsible for the brewery’s original name that translates loosely as “clear water.”

Karoyaka is a Junmai Ginjo sake, which means that it is made with no added alcohol in the brewing process (Junmai) and that the rice used to make it has been polished down to at least 60% of its former mass (Ginjo). In this case, however, the brewery has chosen to polish the rice down to 50% of its former mass, making it technically qualify for Daiginjo status.

In some cases you will see the name of this sake described as “Bamboo Forest.” I’m not entirely sure why, but drinking it certainly evokes the atmosphere of a bamboo forest after a rainstorm. Such atmospheric quality is what makes sake so cool, and this one in particular so tasty.

Tasting Notes:
Colorless in the glass with just the hint of blonde highlights, this sake smells of cedar and rainwater. In the mouth it is silky and jewel-like with a beautiful weight on the tongue and primary flavors of rainwater, melon, and cedar that swirl into a long finish. The finish, (which is not often a prominent feature in sakes) possesses a beautiful sweetness to it that is ever-so-faint, like a fleeting expression on a face. Fantastic.

Food Pairing:
I drank this sake with a great meal of sushi, and recommend mostly raw fish or very delicate flavors to fully appreciate this brew.

Overall Score: around 9.5

How Much?: $35 for 720ml bottle

This sake is available for purchase on the Internet.

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It’s almost impossible to write about pink wines these days without invoking some sort of cliche. Even the (true) claim that rosé wines are no longer out of fashion has been recycled so many times that I’m cringing just typing it.

The fact of the matter is that after years of being vino-non-grata, pink wines are finally back in the awareness of American wine drinkers. After the success of Sutter Home White Zinfandel sent wine lovers running for the hills every time someone offered them a glass of rosé, discerning palates are returning to pink wines in huge numbers. How huge? This is the fourth consecutive year of double digit growth in sales of rosé wines in the United States.

If there’s one organization that might actually be able to take partial credit for this, it would be the masked crusaders at RAP: Rosé Avengers and Producers. This motley crew of stubborn winemakers and publicists decided three years ago that they were tired of seeing pink wines dismissed as the oenological equivalent of Kraft Singles. So they set out to change the way people thought about pink wines in America. And it appears that they very well may have succeeded.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that there’s lots of good rose being produced in the United States. Sadly, America still can’t hold a candle to the rosés of southern France, southern Italy, or Northern Spain. Slowly but surely, though, more and more U.S. wineries are figuring out how to make dry-as-a-bone, crisp, floral rosés with a nice undercurrent of acidity. And this tasting is my annual way of checking to see how the progress is going. Thankfully, there are always a few French wine labels in attendance to make up for the dark syrupy wines that some California producers attempt to pass off as rosé.

If you’re interested in experiencing the ultimate pink wine experience, you can’t do better than the RAP Pink Out Tastings, which are held every Spring in San Francisco. Be warned, however, this is a popular event and a very small space. I recommend going early, and steeling yourself for dealing with a crowd. Having said that, there are some good wines to be tasted, and the appetizers that are served are usually quite good as well.

Rosé Avengers and Producers: Pink Out 2009
Tuesday, May 12th
6:30pm to 8:30pm
Butterfly Restaurant
Pier 33, The Embarcadero (at Bay Street)
San Francisco, CA

Tickets are available for $35 in advance on the event web site. This tasting will likely sell out, as it has done every year, so get them ahead of time.

Street parking can be found on Bay Street, and the Muni streetcar stops right out front.

My usual tips for such public wine tastings: go with food in your stomach; wear dark clothing (or pink, in this case); drink lots of water; and make sure to spit so that you can actually learn something. Hopefully there will be more spit buckets on hand than in years past.

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Review by Tim Patterson.

If you love to drink wine, and love a good read, you have to get ahold of this book.

The dust jacket for this re-issue and annotation of English wineophile George Saintsbury’s famous Notes on a Cellar-Book describes it–correctly–as “one of the greatest tributes to drink and drinking in the literature of wine.” It’s also the quirkiest, the most baffling and inscrutable, and the most flagrantly opinionated.

Writing in the 1920s, Saintsbury (1845-1933) was more than an avid drinker and collector; he was a legendary professor of literature in the British Isles, the author of something like 80 books and innumerable articles, and an unregenerate Tory who once staged a demonstration to keep classical Greek as a requirement for undergraduates. So when he pulled together these reflections on what he had recorded over the years about his alcoholic beverage inventory and how it had been consumed, he naturally sprinkled it with an amazing thicket of literary allusions, asides, quotations, things in quotations for no apparent reason, tirades against Prohibition in the US, and much, much more.

Thankfully, this edition comes with a fine road map to the mind of George Saintsbury in the form of an introduction and extensive annotations by Thomas Pinney, author of the definitive two-volume A History of Wine In America, himself a retired literature professor. If Saintsbury’s egregious references to Charles Lamb, Trollope,Tennyson or Moliere aren’t immediately accessible, or antique terms make you scratch your head, Pinney is there, doing the best he can. If you are momentarily confused about the distinction between kirsch and Cherry Heering, Pinney explains.

Saintsbury himself apparently realized the book might be a bit much; he included his own footnotes to his more elliptical prose, also preserved here, with Pinney’s footnotes on the footnotes.

But don’t get the idea that there is anything ponderous here–it’s a romp from start to finish. You’ll find Saintsbury musing on any topic on which you might want enlightenment: cut glass decanters, raki, mulled Port, small beer, cider, bottle shapes, rum punches, corked wine, the perils of drunkenness, the time his cellar in Cambridge flooded, the time the rats took over his cellar in Edinburgh. You will find advice on how to keep whiskey and brandy in barrels in your cellar, how best to take medicinal brandy in bed, and the relationship between Port and the English character. And yes, thoughts on just about every wine and spirit available in his multi-decade drinking career–this guy tried it all.

We also get a sampling of menus from the extravagant dinner parties of the era. Sign me up for the one with Calf’s Head à la Terrapin, Aspic of Tunny, Braised Beef, Roast Guinea Fowl, and the Anchois Zadioff, whatever that is. (Pinney is no help here.) All washed down with an 1873 Dos Cortados Sherry, an 1889 Giseler Champagne, an 1870 Chateau Margaux and an 1885 La Tache. And some Port.

Here’s how the book ends, a good example of the tone throughout, from the final paragraph of the Postscript:

“I cannot help quoting, as a colophon to this little book, some memorable words of Professor H.E. Armstrong’s in a recent letter to the Times about synthetic and natural indigo. He closed with a parallel. Alcohol as alcohol could be obtained, he said, from all sorts of things; not so ‘a vintage wine, one of the most perfect of nature’s products–to those who can appreciate perfection.’ And it is so. On those who would deprive us of it, let the curse of Nature rest.”

A man after my own heart. On another level, the Notes are a marvelous window into an important era in the history of wine, the period at the turn of the 20th century. At that time rich and/or educated Brits like Saintsbury–well, nobody was quite like Saintsbury–had appointed themselves arbiters of the world’s wines, and were busy establishing Bordeaux as the reference point for fine wine, sorting out the Ports and Sherries, crowning the Mosel, and establishing the idea of well-aged wine as the Holy Grail. In broad terms, the opinions of Saintsbury’s cohort are the conventional wisdom of today’s wine world–and here we see them being created.

If your interest in wine extends beyond what is in your glass to touch on the cultural, historical, or intellectual, you have to read this book.

George Saintsbury, Notes on a Cellar-Book, University of California Press, 2008, $23.96 (hardcover)

Tim Patterson writes for several wine magazines, blogs at Blind Muscat’s Cellarbook, and co-edits the Vinography book review section.

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