News Letter October

Aki-agari and Hiya-oroshi

Finally things are beginning to cool down as we move through nature's most endearing season. Along with the rapidly turning leaves, cooler breezes, and better food, autumn is the traditional time when sake brewed the previous season goes on sale. Two types of sake you may come across in your autumnal perusing are aki-agari and hiya-oroshi.

Although sake is not aged long term, it is in general a bit too young to drink when the brewing season wraps up in the spring. Both the flavors and the fragrances are brash and sharp-edged, and a bit of time sitting quietly helps round out and deepen the sake. This maturation period is known as chojuku.

Traditionally this was just about six months, and so the fall became the time when properly aged sake was released. Naturally, brewers often had to release some sake earlier to satisfy demand. But the connoisseurs knew that properly matured sake was well worth the wait. Sake released in the fall after the proper maturation period came to be known as aki-agari.

The only problem is that the term does not apply too well to modern times.

Fall still remains the traditional time for releasing sake, and this is the season with industry tastings galore. But in actuality maturation periods are far from uniform. Along with the advent of refrigeration came massive flexibility in terms of maturing sake.

These days, some brewers still only mature their sake six months or so, but others do so for a year or longer, and many at very low temperatures, to get just the profile they are looking for. Temperature affects the speed of changes during maturation, as does the choice of aging vessel (bottles or tanks). This allows brewers to tweak their flavor profiles, and maintain consistency throughout the year. But everyone does it a bit differently, and it makes the term aki-agari a tad less applicable.

Today, aki-agari refers in a broad sense to sake from the most recent batch released in the fall. You may see it at sake shops and department stores all across Japan.

Then, there is hiya-oroshi. The word hiya-oroshi has its origins back in the Edo period. Back then, finished sake was stored in the large cedar tanks used for brewing. Normally, this sake had been pasteurized once (by heating it for a short time) before being put in these tanks for maturation. If they needed to ship some out, they would have to pasteurize the sake a second time before putting it into small cedar casks - called taru - for delivery.

This is because the outdoor temperature was still high in the summer, which would allow the sake to become warm enough where dormant enzymes could become activated, potentially sending the sake awry. A second pasteurization permanently deactivates these enzymes, removing that fear, but taking a bit of the zing of the sake along with it.

However, once it became cool enough in autumn, brewers could fill their taru from the storage tank without pasteurizing the sake, and ship it with no fear of it going bad. The lower temperatures of autumn ensured enzymes would not be activated. Such sake - sold in the fall without pasteurizing a second time before shipping - came to be known as hiya-oroshi.

Over time, hiya-oroshi has come to refer to sake not pasteurized a second time, i.e. before shipping, regardless of the season. Although a bit uncommon, you can find sake labeled hiya-oroshi in seasons other than autumn, these days.

Hiya-oroshi often has a bit more of a fresh, lively taste to it than other sake. While not as brash as freshly pressed sake, there can be a slightly youthful edge to it. Naturally, this varies greatly from sake to sake, and from kura to kura.

Aki-agari and hiya-oroshi are two words commonly seen in the fall that have evolved in meaning, changing and growing with the sake world itself.

Kame-no-O
The feud, the ploughed, the maligned

Over the next few months this newsletter will focus a bit more on rice. It is, after all, the stuff of which sake is made. And it would border on incomprehensible to have a wine newsletter that does not delv e deeply into grapes. While it is important and worthwhile to remember the grape-wine connection and the rice-sake connection are not identical, it is still of massive value and interest to study rice and all that surrounds it if you are interested in sake.

So over the next few months we will delve into rice production, grades, and more. But let me begin with the story behind (including a bit of dirty laundry) one variety that is both up-and-coming and very old at the same time: Kame-no-O.

Kame-no-O ("The Tail of the Turtle") is a rice variety that was discovered in the mid-1800s in Yamagata by one Kameji Abe. Legend says he saw a few stalks poking up out of the snow at one odd spot, and thought to himself, "that must be one strong strain," so he took them and cultivated them. He later lent the first half of his first name to the variety. It was, back then, used both for sake and for eating. But, alas, like other tall varieties, soon after the war, growers moved away from it in favor of shorter, easier to grow, more profitable varieties.

However, Japan maintains at least one seed bank, and there were enshrined a handful of seeds of Kame-no-O. These were obtained by the current president of Kusumi Shuzo, Mr. Norimichi Kusumi, the brewery in Niigata brewing a sake called Kiyoizumi. He then revived the rice, growing enough volume to brew sake with it after three years or so. His efforts are presented in a semi-fictionalized manga (comic book) series called "Natsuko no Sake," by the illustrator Akira Oze.

Kusumi-san's efforts sparked further interest in the rice and a revival of sorts began. Currently, about 50 to 60 breweries use Kame-no-O to make sake around Japan. But this is where things get, um, fuzzy.

Why? Because they are not using the same rice. There is another brewery in Yamagata called Koi-kawa ("Carp River." Trust me, that name has more appealing nuances in its native Japanese) that claims to have the original Kame-no-O seeds as well. And he distributed them and promoted increased production of the rice. It lent itself unusually well to growing in the western part of Japan as well, like Shiga Prefecture, and not only the north like Yamagata or Niigata. In fact, these efforts gathered so much critical mass that the 50 or 60 kura doing it began to have a yearly event called the Kame-no-O Summit . However… there was a noticeable absence: that of the gent that revived the rice, Mr. Kusumi of the aforementioned Kiyoizumi in Niigata. And, as I mentioned, there was that pesky technicality, that being that the rices were obviously visually different.

How so? Well, there are these things called "noge" (pronounced "no geh," hard g and short e) on rice plants; some of them, anyway. They are pointy parts of the plant that stick up above the "ine," (pronounced "ee-neh") or seed-laden parts of the rice plant that eventually droop heavily (and beautifully) just before harvest. Some rice varieties have them; others do not. Basically, I am told, these "noge" keep the birds away from the rice grains. I'm not sure what hard-ass crows would turn their tails and flee in the face of a pointy leaf, yet that is what I am told. It seems they're a bit like widow's peaks or co wlicks. Some of us have 'em, some of us don't, but in the end, it's not a big deal.

And the Kame-no-O seeds from the seed bank yielded rice plants that did not have them, whereas the ones from the Yamagata brewery gave rice plants that did. Remarkably, though, other than that, the rices are very similar. The way it handles during fermentation and the sake it yields are very, very close. In fact, any differences can be chalked up to brewery idiosyncrasies and differing methods.

The two strains also share another problem: both are so old that their roots are hard to prove. Why is this significant? Cuz if you can't prove the roots you cannot register it with the federal government. And if you cannot do that, you cannot have it offi cially inspected. And if you cannot have it inspected, you cannot use it to make Special Designation Sake, i.e. junmai-shu, honjozo-shu or ginjo-shu - premium sake.

Heading off on a tangent for just a moment here, if that is the case, how do they make proper premium sake from this rice? The answer lies in the fact that several prefectures (about the size of a county) recognize the rice as valid and inspect it, so that even if the federales do not, they can make premium sake out of it. (As a tangent off of a tangent, though, it still cannot be officially designated a "shuzo kouteki mai," i.e. a sake rice!)

So, back to the feud, inasmuch as it exists, there are these summits and 60 breweries using the rice, but Kusumi-san is nowhere to be seen. I mean, you'd think the guy that revived the rice would be included, right? Noge or no noge. In all fairness, he did the hard work, at least at the beginning. But for wh atever reason, a chasm exists.

So why don't they settle it once and for all? I mean, where is their American spirit? Take 'em to court! Show once and for all that their Kame-no-O is the real McCoy and the other one is an imposter, noge or no noge.

Ah, but one reason this does not happen lies in the long history of the rice strain and the lack of records. I recently asked another illustrator (yes, the sake world is blessed enough to have two comic book authors professionally devoted to it, and both are way, way into Kame-no-O, as well as junmai-shu . But I digress), Hiroshi Takase, about the truth behind this. And the hushed-voiced sake-pub rumor from my illustrator friend source was as follows.

"You see," he began, "the rice is very old. Records are scarce. It is hard to prove the roots of this rice. But if push were to come to shove and research ran deep, one or the other would necessarily have to be eliminated. Neither party wants that to happen; neither wants to take the risk of being proven wrong for once and for all, so the issue is not pushed." So, like so many other issues here, they just kind of deal with it and more or less peacefully coexist.

He went on to explain that the strain from Koi-kawa had a greater chance of becoming official as "Kame-no-O Number 4," but did not speculate on how likely that was to happen.

What of the rice itself? A few, but not too many, are exported. Is it worth seeking? Sure it is. But it is not likely to blow you away. To me, sake made from Kame-no-O is fairly broad and deep, which I like, and rich as well, but aromatics are often overly subdued, and there seems to be a mild lactic character to many of them. Very interesting overall, and worth seeking, but maybe more romance than substance. But then again, that's just me.

By all means, seek out the Tail of the Turtle and decide for yourself.

This passages are quoted  from Mr. John Gauntner's sake-world.

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