More Sake Content Than I Have Time For!
Covid-19 is wreaking havoc on societies and markets, and sake has not been exempted.
Following worldwide restaurant and bar shutdowns, I’ve heard that brewers are barely making half the sales they made last year. In a time of mass unemployment, anxiety and loss, I know silver-lining talk can sound tone-deaf and Pollyanna-ish. But I believe in facing the world with compassion, and helping to make it better in whatever way we can, and that includes supporting the businesses and people that we most want to see thrive beyond this worldwide scourge. I also believe in embracing the joy that is still within our reach, which includes good food and drink. So given all of this, here’s the silver lining: This is a golden age of free virtual sake education.
To help compensate for plummeting sales, brewers, along with a worldwide community of sake educators and agents are taking to Instagram Live, Zoom, and other platforms to tell their stories, show off their breweries, introduce their farmers, and hold virtual tastings. There are so many webinars to tune in to that I can’t keep up. Most of these events are scheduled for after 8 pm east coast time, which is the next morning for interviewees in Japan. If sake is your livelihood, it makes for a very long day of work.
But for fans, these events offer a somewhat unfiltered look into the world of sake, in a form that didn’t exist before the pandemic. If you’re interested in catching some of these, here’s a partial list:
The American Sake Association, led by Timothy Sullivan, Chris Johnson, Jamie Graves, and others, has been holding fun and increasingly polished Zoom Sake Social Sundays every week from 8 to 9 pm, with a nijikai, or after-party, that follows. While these founders are each associated with different brands or businesses, the association itself is dedicated to sake camaraderie, education and raising money for different charities.
So far, breweries it has featured include Masumi Brewery, Kidoizumi Brewery, and in New York, Brooklyn Kura and Kato Sake Works. Definitely worth a tune-in if you like sake.
Sake educator-to-thousands John Gaunter has made this Instagram Live video, a wide-ranging Q & A, available on his Sake Industry News site. Two issues of the subscription newsletter are also available free, Issue 13 and Issue 14.
In his role as saker importer, John and Vine Connections Director of Sake & Spirits Monica Samuels have done live informational sessions and guided tastings from brewers including Imada Brewery’s Miho Imada (Fukucho), and Tetsuro Igarashi of Kumazawa Brewery (Tensei). They joined forces with Toronto’s own Metropolitan Wines & Sakes to showcase regionality in sake through three breweries, Rihaku, Yuho, and Yamada. So far one of these, the Imada Brewery event, is available to view here, and John promises that more will be uploaded soon.
Jamie Graves, Japanese portfolio manager at Skurnik Wines ,has been doing super-interesting talks with sake-makers including Yoshi Yamamoto of Yucho Brewery in Nara and Iwao Niizawa of Niizawa Brewery (Hakurakusei). Coming up in the next few weeks will be conversations with Kodama Brewery in Akita, and if you’re into shochu, Yanagita Distillery in Miyazaki. The best way to keep up with Skurnik’s live events (they’re not archived, so pay attention!) is through Jamie’s Instagram account.
For a highly restaurant-focused company like Skurnik, the sudden closing of restaurants and bars has been a blow, Jamie says. Sake sales have suffered more than wine, since more of it is consumed in these venue rather than in homes. Yet the business has been buoyed by retail sales, he adds, which “have been absolutely crazy in the past two months,” exceeding expectations.
Here in Toronto, my co-writer Michael Tremblay, in collaboration with Kampai Toronto, is planning a webinar on his favorite area of expertise—sake and regionality—Thursday, June 18 at 7:30 pm. To get the most out of it, you can buy a mixed case of sake from Wine Align, which will include all the sakes he’ll be covering. Included will be the just-released, refreshing Masumi Origarami pet-nat, and Sakura Muromachi’s Bizen Omachi junmai ginjo This is your chance to totally geek out on rice, yeast and koji kin varieties, and have it be considered completely normal! You can sign up here.
Michael is also planning an upcoming session with Keith Norum of Masumi to discuss the Nagano Brewery’s new lineup. Stay tuned to his Instagram account for updates.
Mariko Tajiri, national brand manager for That’s Life Gourmet has recorded a slew of Zoom and Instagram Live chats with the company’s great lineup of brewers, including Jun Kono, president of Sohomare and Tomonobu Mitobe, president/brewer at Mitobe Brewery in Yamagata. On deck are sessions with Jikon Brewery in Mie and Fukumitsuya in Ishikawa. Check That’s Life Toronto’s Instagram feed for upcoming events, and its IG Live feed for archived talks.
Mariko especially appreciates her brewers who speak English, including Kono-san and Mitobe-san. They are “amazing to have on Instagram live because we can give the audience their story directly from the people who make the sake, without translation,” she notes. “On Zoom, where we have a bit more time and a few more options (multiple screens for example), we can do brewery tours and translate and not be rushed.” Her favorite sake brewer interview moment was when Mitobe-san sang a local Yamagata song for the audience. (That’s in Part II of the interview, for those of you who want to find it.)
Other educators who are creating accessible sake content include Los Angeles-based sake somm and educator Toshio Ueno of the Sake School of America and Natsuki Kikuya, whose Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Sake and Regionality course is available for viewing on YouTube
For those of you who want to take your sake education further with an actual course, many educators are taking their sake education classes online, including John Gauntner’s Sake Professional Course in July via Zoom, and Michael’s Level 3 WSET class, which he says filled up in record time, perhaps due to “people wanting to take advantage of their idle time, and escaping some of the more negative aspects of what we are going through now.”
As competition for viewers mounts in this sake content-rich time, the question of what kind of audience producers want to attract comes to the fore. Jamie says he’s trying to make his webinars “less technical and industry focused and more culturally and historically focused” in order to reach those outside the usual sake audience. Mariko is considering making two different levels of programing, one for general audiences, and one for industry professionals who want a more granular level of technical detail.
In the end, all of this, for me and for these educators, is about supporting a craft industry that we care about, and want to see survive. “What keeps me motivated,” says Jamie, “is knowing that so many of these are small family businesses, knowing we're supporting them and not just going to some huge conglomerate.
