Is the Japanese drink beer or wine? Does it even matter?

By Manu Remakant

Sake’s lot is strange. As the world finally warms up to the centuries-old Japanese drink, sake’s home country, Japan, is trying to shake it off and move to glitzy beverages from the West.

“Sake” in Japanese could refer to any alcoholic drink, so you have to specifically say “nihonshu” to get the rice brew, which many there believe is the drink of the Shinto gods.


But is sake beer or wine?
Sake doesn’t fall into easy categories but if you go by the way it is brewed, it has closer affinities to beer. In wine, fruits are packed with sugar for the yeast to ferment them, but rice — which is fermented to make sake — cannot lure the sweet-toothed yeast cells. Sake follows the beer-brewing way where grains are processed to make sugar from starch. While the process of beer-making involves two steps — converting starch into sugar and sugar into alcohol — in sake the two changes happen simultaneously.

If the youth of Japan want to forsake sake, it is because they find it too traditional.

Sake is no modern drink. Its first hints are present in broken shards unearthed from the banks of the Yellow River that point to a prehistoric time, then its telltale presence can be found in the sacred texts of 3rd century BC that talk about drinking and the ritual dancing that followed it. Wet rice cultivation had already arrived in the country. The imperial court and temples held large tracts of land and the excess rice they cultivated could have gone straight to crude breweries.



By 12th century AD, the imperial monopoly of making sake was dissolved and common people began to try their hands at it at home. Soon sake became a way of life in Japan.

Sake is rice, water and koji, the yeast mould that feasts on rice. The better the ingredients the better the drink. It all starts with rice.

The otherwise inedible rice, saka mai (sake rice), is not what people cook at home for food. But this short-grained rice has a large enough kernel with starch content concentrated in the centre. Since sake uses only starch, the grains should also be brawny enough to go through some intense polishing, to remove the bran. The more it is polished, the clearer the sake will be. There are more than 80 types of sake rice that are bottled in Japan. Now twist your tongue around these names: yamadanishiki, miyamanishiki, gohyakumangoku and omachi. These are some of the most popular varieties.

Water is another ingredient that decides the quality of sake. Brewers look for sources — lakes, rivers and wells — that can make a difference to the taste. The koji mould, formed by kneading yeast and rice by hand or machine, breaks the starch in the grains to sugar and finally to alcohol. Multiple fermentation eases out the essence of rice. The resulting liquid may have more than 20% alcohol, which will then be diluted to 15% by adding water. Lees are removed, although there are people who like a bit of chewy stuff with the drink and some productions cater to their taste.



The drink benefits from a storage of nine to twelve months before it is ready to be bottled as sake.

In certain types of sake, a little alcohol is added to extract the flavours and aromas of the brew. However, toji, the sake brewer. will tell you how to keep such meddling to the minimum to make quality stuff. Toji, responsible for the final taste of the drink, is highly respected in the brewing industry.

Sakes range from the ordinary to the premium. The difference depends on the quality of ingredients, the degree to which the rice has been polished (the more the costlier) and the quantity of additives (the more the cheaper) in the final drink. Traditionally, sake is drunk from a small ceramic or a wooden cup, but these days premium brands focus on glassware, which they think can make people appreciate the look of the cloudy white drink.

How do you drink it? On formal occasions, wait for your friend to catch your glass empty and let her fill it up. You can then return the courtesy by refilling her glass the moment it gets empty (if you are the host, pour the drink till it overflows, which shows you are generous).

Like wine, sake can be sweet or dry. It can be taken at room temperature or frozen. While hot sakes warm you up in winters, icy sake is good for summers. Take a whiff of it, and it will remind you of fruits, nuts and caramel. A good sake will taste mild and delicately balanced — a bit sweet, a tad bitter and acidic. Premium sakes are complex in their flavour and notes.

It is a misconception that sake goes well only with Japanese cuisine. It is wonderful with cheese and steak.

Sake is now gulped down outside Japan, with breweries popping up in China, North America, South America, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia.

And they are learning to say “kanpai!” Well, that is the Japanese way of saying cheers!

(The writer teaches in Kerala)