True Sake in the News – Wine and Spirits Fall 2016
W&S did a nice article on Terroir, and they wisely came to some sake folks to pitch in. When I was approached to do this article, I was told that it would be part of a piece focusing on Terroir and there would be a lot of somms picking certain areas around the world and focusing on why the wines of these regions where what they were. And yes, they wanted to include sake.
As many of you know, Terroir in sake is not as pronounced as it is in wine. There are many reasons for this, but I saw this article as a way of shedding a little light on this subject from sake’s perspective. So I picked a prefecture that is pretty famous in the history and promotion of sake. I selected Niigata to speak about the change in sake, the “perception” in sake, and the future of sake within one location. I am not the biggest “honk” for Niigata sake, but it was a good challenge to spell things out.
Like most articles that you read, things change. First the other sake submitter didn’t adhere to the “pick one region” boundaries of the article. Huh? I was surprised when the writer of the article showed me his selections. But secondly, I did perhaps too much work and the writer tried to cram everything in, and in the process minced many of my thoughts. There is no perfect article! Nevertheless I am grateful to the writer, and to Wine and Spirits, for including sake in this exercise. It was fun for me to explore the evolution of Niigata sake, and I look forward to sharing it with our customers.