We pair sake with our tasting menus,”says Roger
Dagorn, a sommelier at Chanterelle. “Depending on the dish, I’ll recommend
sake that is mellow, aromatic, floral, spicy or herbaceous. Certain houses
have fine reputations; for example, there are Otokoyama, Tsukasabotan, Narutotai
and Wakatake Onikuroshi. Once a year, usually in May, our chef, David Waltuck,
organizes an entire dinner pairing sake with each course. We’ve always filled
every table.”
Tipple of Technique
Popular in Japan since the third century, when wet
cultivation of rice first began, sake production requires a complex, lengthy,
labor-intensive process of polishing, washing, soaking and steaming rice, adding
koji (a type of mold), yeast and water, and then allowing the brew to ferment
before being filtered and bottled. The end result is typically as clear and
clean tasting as spring water.
“Wine is an alcohol of stuffs, while
sake is an alcohol of technique,” says Akihiko Sugawara, president of the
Otokoyama sake brewery in the Miyagi prefecture. “Wine is an alcohol of agriculture, and sake is an alcohol of industry.” Unlike wine, which depends
heavily upon terroir (roughly defined as the ways in which soil or place
influence the identity of a wine), sake relies upon methodology.
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