Banzai! The Complete Guide to Sake

Logan B.

If all you've ever known of Sake are those small hot bottles of white porcelain then you've come to the right place. We've got you covered all the way from unfiltered to unheard of. Order up some tako-maki, loosen your samurai sword and prepare yourself for the MetroWize bare bones guide to Sake.

First let's get the basics out of the way, Sake is made from rice and often classified as a rice wine but in reality it's distilled and fermented more like a beer but usually stronger in alcohol content. Now we could go into the science, the brewing process and what not but we'll leave that to Wikipedia. With Sake all you need to remember is the following:

Hot Sake, the kind most people are familiar with, became popular during World War II and it really served as a way to mask the flavors of the cheap stuff. Treat hot sake like the ladies on the show Golden Girls, sure there is Ruth the über cougar but its always good to stay away from anything over 60. To clarify, the general rule is that hot sake is the bad stuff. While there are exceptions, try to stay away from anything hotter then room temp.

Filtered sakes are clear in color or at least transparent. A good 720ml bottle in a restaurant shouldn't set you back more than twenty bucks. They range from dry to off-dry to just plain sweet. Sake, like Champagne is renowned for its regions: hard to pronounce, far, far away regions. Try Hakutusuru Sayuri Nigori Filtered - it's off dry with a nice smooth finish. Unless you drink like us, one bottle should last a meal for two.

Unfiltered sakes are just starting to gain more headway here in the States. They've got a rich milky color and as stated, are unfiltered, leaving in all the tasty grain solids and little bits of rice. Yukiwatari Junmai Unfiltered is a nice example of this type: it's dry, smooth and in our opinion this type of sake packs in more flavor than Brigitte Nielsen from her days on Strange Love.

For the rest of The Complete Guide to Sake, check out part 2.