The first time I’ve heard of Inter Rice Asia, it was from a colleague. Her family owns a Japanese restaurant and gets their bottles from this sake supplier, who regularly goes to their restaurant to hold private tastings for their new products. (Lucky her!)
When your family is in the restaurant business, you learn to take booze seriously and treat each bottle with care. Proper alcohol storage with climate control is essential to keep them in an optimal condition. I’m a bit more casual, and may have given her a shock when I briefly mentioned that I’m storing my wines in my wife’s old dormitory mini-fridge instead of getting a wine cellar. Fridges apparently run too cold, and the condensation that results when taking the wine bottles out of the fridge can damage the labels. (Who knew? Definitely not the guy who’s calling them booze. Though in hindsight, if you look at the picture, you can see the one of the labels have indeed soaked through from the condensation.)
I’ll pass on ordering a wine cellar for the time being; the bottles that I’ve been buying are probably not in the same stratosphere as the ones that she’s getting, and my customers (i.e. me) aren’t as persnickety as the people that she’s used to dealing with. While I don’t think my laissez-faire ways will win me an invitation to any of Inter Rice Asia’s private tastings anytime soon, luckily for me, the sake importer held a public tasting event for their 17th anniversary. So off I went.
It was held on the third floor in a quiet industrial park in Kallang, and off every beaten track. It’s not the easiest location to get to, and you wouldn’t want to be driving to attend an event like this. But on the bright side, there’s a nearby eatery serving terribly good steamboat, and I recommend getting lunch first before you start drinking.
There were eight tasting booths, and many, many sake bottles for sampling. I’ve been to similar events for wine tastings, and I also attended a couple of whisky exhibitions, so it was a particularly pleasant surprise find that the sake dealers and lovers are so chilled out. Wines (and sometimes whiskies) can invoke a certain vibe in the servers and their clientele. IYKYK. At the sake tasting, everybody just seemed so warm. From the servers to my fellow patrons, everybody were friendly and approachable. I made a remark on how little I knew about sake, and just about everybody’s eyes - from the servers to the patrons - simply lit up. The servers started talking about the sakes they were carrying, explained their favourite bottles and guided me towards what they enjoyed. Even the other patrons spoke about what bottles they enjoyed and guided me to several fascinating choices that I might not otherwise tried. This conversation starter might have gotten me shunned at a wine tasting, but folks here were excited about sake and weren’t afraid to be warm and show it.
While we were taking a break from all the sakes that we had drunk, we struck up a conversation with another patron who turned out to be a sake educator. She pointed us towards her - and soon to be ours - favourite buy: a sweet sake liqueur made with mikan, or Japanese mandarin orange. This was one of her top choice to make sake cocktails with, and she had put down an order for 3 bottles. It was just about the end of the event, but the servers were such sweethearts and continued pouring for us. The sake was sweet and tart, almost as sweet as the servers. Truly, the mikan sake liqueur and its Yuzu cousin were terrific, and we added both to our growing basket of sakes. (If you see the first picture again with the almost-empty bottle, it was because it was so delicious, we near-finished our bottle before I thought I should take a photo of it.)
All too soon, the tasting session was over. As I joined the queue to pay, I made small talk with a well-dressed gentleman who soon introduced himself to be the owner. He peered into my basket of sakes and asked if I had the chance to try their warm sakes. I didn't have time to, but even though the tasting session was over, he invited me to go to the booth after I made our purchases to try those sakes. I was still reeling from all the alcohol that I had drunk, so I passed on the offer. But it was a business run with grace.
(As I was writing this post, I realised that I didn’t take any pictures at the actual event. I didn’t want to appear even more of a rube by whipping out my phone to take photos. So instead I’ll put a couple photos taken from my recent Takayama trip that I went on after this sake tasting event.)
A common refrain that I’ve heard about sake was that they often didn’t taste like much of anything, which was understandable as they're usually lighter compared to wines and spirits. There’s a grain of truth in that (pun intended): restrained, light-tasting and elegant sakes were often a deliberate stylistic choice. Breweries from Niigata in particular are renowned for creating such sakes, with their sake philosophy to avoid overshadowing the food that they are paired with.
When I was touring Hida-Takayama, a region famous for their high quality beef, I was at a local sake brewery. I asked one of the staff for a recommendation to pair with the beef that I was going to cook that night, and without a moment's hesitation, she directed me to a light-tasting sake, while explaining firmly that "if you want the Japanese way of food pairing, this is the sake for you." If you'd spent any amount of time travelling in Japan and interacting with the customer-facing staff, then you'll understand that her choice of words was as certain and forceful as she can get. Choose another style of sake and you'll be a fool, gaijin. That sake - which wasn't part of their most expensive lineup - wasn't the fruity sort of sake that I liked, and didn't stand out amongst the other sakes while I sampled one ochoko cup after another while earlier at the brewery. But later, as I drank it with our steak, I realised that she was right. Its restrained profile cleared my palate and the next bite of beef tasted as good as the first bite. A full-bodied fruity sake would have been far too heavy and contrasted too much with the rich beef.
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| As an aside, I was |
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| But every sake pairs well with a good snowy mountaintop view. (Photo from our trip in Toyama, in Midagahara Hotel up on the Japanese Alps) |
Just don’t tell any alcohol connoisseurs if you’re planning to stick your bottles in your fridge.
