Hey, you are listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. Hi, I'm Chris, I do wine-related things. I'm Jenna, I also do communications. I'm Neeve, I'm a wine consultant. Hey, Neeve. Special guest, Neeve. Welcome to the podcast, Neeve. Even backwards or Avine. Oh yeah. Avinescent. Okay. So we couldn't get the Saké buyer for this or what? Saké buyer is so ensconced in Saké, loves it so much that he can't pull himself away from tasting new brands. Have we seriously not done Saké before? I feel like we have, but I can't. According to Jim, and I trust him, we have not. That's impossible. Yeah. Well, I guess we're overdue. So Neeve, you're going to walk us through some Saké? Oh yeah. I'm going to try my best. I was saying earlier, every time I think I know about Saké, I taste Saké and then remember that I don't. I sat next to the Saké buyer for four years and tasted all the Saké's that they tasted and it is gone from my brain. I don't know why. This industry, we don't retain, I don't retain the stuff. Why don't people care about Saké? It's a bit of a complicated category, I guess, and I think it's the Japanese terms, like really throw people off. For some reason, it's easier for us to memorize German and French with wine, but Japanese is harder. Why don't they just switch to French? Why don't they switch to French? Why don't they just make all of the labels cream and put buildings on them? Exactly. It took me a minute to realize that the two smaller bottles that you brought, there's two of each of them. And I was like, I can't even tell these apart. They're both Chateau Edo. Exactly. What? I don't know. That's what Tokyo was called before it was Tokyo. The famed Edo period in Japan. No. You're so smart. Lots of art made during that time. Yeah. Up until the mid 1800s, about 1860s. Am I the only one who didn't know this? My Japanese history is not really up to par here. All right. All right. You batted 500 with people in the room and that's all. Better than most times. All right. Here's what I know about Saké. It's made from rice. That's correct. All right. Tell me about it then. It's made from rice, specific water, yeast and koji, which is a mold. And the water is really important for it. Japan has softer water than most places in general, even compared to what the rest of Europe calls soft water. Japan's water is even softer. They just have a lot of really good minerals in their water. And the softer water aids in creating a more delicate beverage, so to say. Is that like Kentucky? It's filtered naturally? Rhinestone filtered waters. Is that it? Yeah, natural spring water, but of the highest quality. You just made the chef's kiss. Maybe these are changed labels to Italian, I don't know. Yeah, really high quality water. And then the koji is a special mold that they use. Back in the day, it used to be naturally occurring. Sometimes people still do that, but not too much anymore. They kind of have pre-made koji starters that they'll add to the rice after it's been steamed, and that will start fermentation, and then they'll introduce the yeast in, which again, the yeast used to occur naturally, but now I believe there's either 17 or 19 common yeast strains that they can choose between, and the yeast will give it different aromatics and different flavors, but it's most notable for giving the saké different aromas. Fun fact, back in the very, very beginning when saké was It's just like chicha from South America, the corn beer. It's just like that. Saliva beer. They're both gross. Yeah, but you got to, for the proper enzymes to break down starches, amylase in your saliva. We got to amylase already. Bam. But so instead they use aspergillus, which is a fungus or mold. It naturally grows on grains, so there you go, that's how it started, but now they use very specific strain of it. You get mycelium, just like you do with mushrooms, that grow into the rice and convert starch into sugar. That sounds so gross. Yeah. They don't do that anymore. Throwing that out there, people don't chew on it anymore. The saliva part. The rest of it is still, I think. But that's fine because it yields these really ethereal beverages. We did, what, a month, two months ago maybe, Neeve led a hashtag Women of Binny's Lunch and Learn. Saké was the topic that's kind of what got us here and the styles were so drastically different. You had flavored and fruity and dry, sweet. You had things that I wouldn't even have realized were Saké if I was blind tasting them. What is the order that we're tasting in today? I'm going to bring us up in terms of level of polished rice grain. The Nagori, the rice can be polished base level 70% and up from there, but it's also unfiltered, which is why I keep it at the lower level. It's real cloudy. Then we're going to go up to some Junmai, which is the next level of filtering. This would also start at a base of 50, or I mean, sorry, 70%. But the two Junmais I have are fun and different. We have a Tokubetsu Junmai, which Tokubetsu just means special. And it just denotes that the Brewmaster, which is called a Toji, but the Brewmaster did something different to the sake that would create something special. So they either use a really specific rice grain, or they use like a fancy form of yeast or specific water. This one in particular has matured 18 months, which is longer than the average is about six months to a year. So this one's been matured a little bit longer. And then the other Junmai we have is a Sparkling one, which when we get to it, that one has a really cool backstory behind it. And then we have a Junmai Ginjo, which is the next level up. And then Junmai Daiginjo, which is the most filtered and the highest level. And this one in particular also has some cool things about it, which we'll get to later. I don't want to hop around too much. I'm excited to dig into these. Let's pour one. The one that I think we should start with is the Nagori, Countless Visions Nagori. Typically, they do have more melon fruit. This one should have more tropical fruit notes, a little bit of a white pepper, a slight spiciness to it. In general, all Nagoris are gonna be sweeter, and they're gonna have those melon notes. We do have one on our shelves called Kurosawa Nagori, and that one has a little bit of an umami in it as well, which is kind of fun and different. If somebody who's listening is an avid Nagori drinker, that one's a little bit different. That sounds neat. Yeah, it's really cool. It's one of my favorite ones, actually. Those are not as common on our shelves, the savory ones, but literally glutamates, like monosodium glutamate is produced in that style. So you get that deep umami, mushroomy, earthy flavor rather than the high tone fruit notes. This one's the unfiltered type. So it has kind of like rice residue in the bottle, and it creates a more creamy texture to it. It's naturally going to have a little bit of a sweetness to it from the rice residue. And this is one of the only sakés that should never be warmed up ever. It's only to be served lightly chilled or cold. Once you warm up the creaminess, it's going to get gross. So this is one of the ones that would be suggested. You know, I never understood it until you just said it just like this. Gross and creamy. It's going to get gross warm. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, this style is often sweet, right? And it will have those pronounced, usually fruity aromas, the esters. You get things like ethyl acetate, which gives you that real banana-y, you know, banana oil, pear drop, as they used to say in the wine industry about- Candies that they no longer make anymore. Exactly. That's kind of a British term that they would be applied to carbonic maceration. All right. Let's dive into this one. What do you call it? Countless Visions. Countless Visions. That is the name. I have counted them and I don't believe it. So this one, you can definitely smell those melon right off the back of the nose. Honeydew galore. And pear. And pear, pear drop, banana, it's all that. It's like the sweet round fruits, the broad flavored fruits. Yeah, exactly. It actually has a lot of similar notes to a Sauvignon Blanc. We just tried at a different women of Binny's thing the other day. There was a Honig, the Honig Sauvignon Blanc. Shared a lot of similar, their reserve though, not their regular ones, shared a lot of similar, the melon, the pear notes that we're seeing here. Yeah. I mean, you can get that out of Sauvignon Blanc. And I think Honig in particular is a weird case. They used a small proportion of musket in their Sauvignon Blanc. It gives it a particularly high-toned floral and fruity note. So that makes a lot of sense. This is good. And there's the Musquet clone of Sauvignon Blanc that is commonly used, which is also more aromatic. So when you talk about Sauvignon Blanc, you think about like the crispness and acidity, and this doesn't have acidity, but it does have something that gets you right back here in the salivary glands. It's got a bit of like a starfruit. If you've ever had starfruit, it has that. It has that like kind of like. Roger, where are you? Bright, like uplifting flavor to it, even though it's not necessarily acidic. Still have not. I don't know what my excuse is for having not had it. I should have brought fruits with me. The amount that I speak about, different fruits at work, we should just. A fruit queen. Yeah. We have the Fruit Kings on the podcast, who everything goes back to fruit no matter what. Jenna, we got to switch positions. You really should be sitting over here. So it has that like. Tart fruit, right? Tart brightness while maintaining that creamy texture. It's really smooth, very easy drinking. I think a lot of times when people are a little bit scared to try a Saké, for the first time, Nagori is often one of the ones that I'll point them to first, either Nagori or something that's super fruity. But Nagori, just because it's so easy drinking and that creaminess helps to cut back from, sometimes Saké can have a bit of like a sharp kind of alcoholic tinge to it at the end and the Nagori's don't really have that at all. Just a few things. It is common to add distilled spirit to Saké too. Not all of them do, but that's quite common. And as far as a fermented beverage goes, it's very high in alcohol anyway. Really? Yeah. What's the spirit, like a rice distillate or a grain distillate? Yeah. Yeah, it would be basically so. Okay. If you ever look at the Saké shelf, the word that denotes that there's added alcohol is honjozo, which is H-O-N-J-O-Z-O. All of those ones are going to have like fortified alcohol in there. Interesting. That's something I did not know. A lot of the other ones are actually watered back like you would do to a whiskey. Like you would do to a whiskey. Well, no, I mean, just like a distillery. Yeah, I got your proof, Dom. Yeah, because they can ferment up to about 20 percent, but a lot of times they're watered back to like 15 or so. Is that just for strength or for flavor too? I think both. It's weird how much alcoholic strength affects the way you perceive the nose and the palate of any given thing. I think I've told you guys this before, but I once met this wine maker who came out of the food industry, and he developed fruity pebbles and stuff like that. He was the hardcore wine manipulator on that side of the scale, as opposed to the biodynamic side or something, and he would dial in his alcohol every single wine. If it was 14 percent, he'd do some reverse osmosis, see what it tastes like at 13.5 and at 13 and maybe 13.8, and he would swear that that made all the difference in the world, how you perceive the fruit notes and stuff. I believe it. Yeah. So you've said things like Ginjo and Daiginjo and Junmai. So 101 Saké stuff, you're milling rice or you're polishing rice. Yeah. What's that do? It makes it smaller? Yeah. So the polishing of the rice takes away the more starchy, harder outer shell of the rice so that you can get to the sweeter part of the grain which is inside. And the way that they describe Saké is a little bit backwards. So if something is 70% polished, it means that there's 70% remaining of the grain. Okay. So they're taking 30% is polished away. Exactly. You have to remember too, you're not starting with white rice, you're starting with brown rice, so you're polishing off the bran. You're getting rid of basically fats and proteins. I was going to ask about that. So there is a bran in a rice too. It's the same grain structure as other wheat, stuff like that. Correct. So you start with brown rice, polish it away. When you get to the core, you're looking at mostly starch that can be converted into sugar, maltose, and glucose. You ever been on the L and there's somebody loud talking into a cell phone? That's me. I will never forget this. I was pulling up to Howard, really had to pee because I hydrate so much, and this lady was having a conversation on the phone, and she was telling her friend her Chinese order, and she was like, no, I want the brown rice. It's healthier. I don't know. It's whole wheat rice. I was like, it is not. So this is not whole wheat rice. It's not whole wheat rice. The whole wheat has been polished away. This is middle of the way. Okay. Polished away. Yeah. Just through rubbing them? That kind of thing? It used to be done by hand, if you can believe it, or- Mouth, I guess. By mouth. But, yeah. Then, so this one that we had, the nigori- Yes. Has still some of the polished away dust in it. Yeah. That's why it's this creamy white color coconut milk kind of thing. You have to shake them up every once in a while. A fermented coconut drink from Mexico that one of our coworkers says the nigori taste very similar to it. I can't believe that. Yeah. Okay. One, I believe it. And two, our eyes really influence the way that we taste things so much. Because you see that and you think this is going to taste like coconut. And it does, but that's part of your experience of it. And that's probably why it's less scary when you make that recommendation. People are familiar with that kind of looking texture. Yeah. It looks kind of like a creamier coconut water if anyone's curious. Totally. And that reminds me of what I was going to say before, which is that some nigoris I find to be textural rather than just creamy, like a little gritty. And this one is not at all. It's very creamy and smooth on the palate. Yeah. Maybe a tiny bit. But some are, it's really obvious. So it depends on how sensitive you are. I've tasted them with people and some people go, yeah, I don't grit. No. This is a great one though. Yeah, it's very nice. Thank you, Countless Visions. So next, we're gonna start with one of the Junmais. We're gonna start with Tentaka, Hawk in the Heavens. This one is one that I love to recommend. I think it's really cool. One, cause it's Tokubetsu. So this one's aged a little bit longer. It has more of those like umami, little bit of like a nutty, very kind of like richer in style. So this is one of the ones that if somebody wanted to heat up a saké, I would suggest this. We can get into the temperature thing kind of like as an after conversation after we taste them all. Because that's like a whole separate conversation. But this one you could do lightly chilled, room temperature, lightly warmed or warmed up a little bit more. There's kind of like a scale of that. But yeah, it should have some more like umami, nutty flavors to it while still being pretty like smooth and kind of clean at the end. And this one would be Tokubetsu Junmai. So minimum polishing of 70 percent and Tokubetsu, meaning special, has been aged, matured longer than your typical Junmai. And back to Saké 101, Junmai refers to the fact that it's just right, pure rice. Pure rice. Yeah. Okay. So aged, how is this aged? Maturing the saké in the bottles, typically is six months to a year, and this one is aged for 18 months, so only a little bit longer. But just those couple months really do help create more of those umami and rich flavors. Recently, I was at a saké tasting and I was actually able to try some sakés that were aged for years. I think one of them was aged for 10 years, and it was actually quite interesting. It kind of took on a bit of a dry sherry, nutty, kind of rich but sharp thing going on. It was super, super cool. Interesting. Tasted like oak. It was very interesting. So, scaled way back. This will have a little bit of that similar, like you get how it's starting to be a little bit aged. Hawk in the Heavens. The labels all kind of look the same. I can't tell them apart, but the names are so inventive and creative. I was gonna say they're like Japanese movie names. Yeah. That's what I always say. Princess Mononoke. What I like about saké is everything is always very intentional and done kind of like with a love behind it. Hawk in the Heavens is suppose there's like a bird that is good luck when you see the bird and the bird used to live near their brew house. So that's why they named it that. And the Countless Visions one, that one is named after a poem, I believe. There's another one, Wandering Poet, that's named after a poet as well. Go figure. But yeah, they all have like so much intention behind everything that they do, like what rice they pick, what water they pick, how they do everything is very like intentional and with care and with like love, which I think is really cool. What got, so, I mean, we alluded earlier, Saké is kind of this forgotten category. This is our first episode on the podcast in all these years. And shout out to you and Courtney and Evergreen also comes to mind. You guys have really grown these Saké sections in your department and really taken care of them. And you, I mean, you have a beautiful selection that you, I know that you personally have made here. Why? What got you? How? Thank you. It's not that cool of a backstory. When I first started here and I was a cashier, I really, really wanted to be in the wine department. But at the time they were pretty full. And so I found the category that people knew the least about. And I was like, I'll just learn about that. But then as soon as I started learning about it, as I was saying, like how much intention and care is behind the products, I started to really care about them, which is why I take a lot of pride in how that particular section is like displayed and how everything is organized. And I recently, me and my other co-worker, Justin, thanks Justin, built, we built a shelf out of the wooden wine crates. And I put sakés that have special stories and stuff behind there, and I'll cycle them out. And so there's like little paragraphs on the backstories of those, just because I want to like highlight and try to. Yeah. All right. Hawk in the Heavens. Total shift in direction here. It is indeed. It's like more like honey, like rich honey. But it does have that savory component you're talking about. So this is not one of those all earth and all mushroom. This is honeyed, fruity, but it has what would be referred to as amenezando, or a savory umami element to it, for sure. Definitely in like the back of the palette. After you swallowed or spit it out in our case, you can kind of like feel it at the back of your mouth, which is I think pretty cool. Definitely one that you could have with a little bit of harder to pair foods like asparagus or some of those other funkier vegetables. Definitely could do some mushrooms. For sure, mushrooms. Some lighter seasoned red meat, like a lamb or something would be pretty good too. It's really subtle and complex. It's subtle and complex. But yeah, I think you're right. Asparagus is notoriously hard to pair with wine and there are a handful of things that do it, but Saké is one of the better beverages to put with asparagus. I could see this with a lot of things like barbecued eel. I think that would be really good with this. You've never had that? No, gross. Are you serious? Not the texture. Maybe I just had the wrong eel. I think you did. You've been to a sushi restaurant? Whenever I get the assortment and they throw eel on there, it's the thing that horrifies me. Why? It's got the sweet sauce on it. It's all grizzly. I think you're crazy. I don't think you're talking about the same thing. This is not the first time I've been told no. I'm drawing no on this podcast. Unagi. I have never had it barbecued, grilled. Well, you should try it. It's delightful. All right. This is very refreshing. It's refreshing too. I want to sit outside and just sip on this right now. I could drink a lot of this. Yeah. Where do we fall on carbs? This could become my new beverage. That's a good question. I don't know that. It's all a matter of how sweet or dry it is, obviously. Obviously, yeah, that makes sense. And there is a scale that they measure on it, so like negative 3A2. Yeah. A lot of them will have, like, if you see at the back of this bottle, it'll tell you kind of like a scale of how sweet or how dry it is and then it's like fruity or umami. Yeah. They do that for the Americans. Yes, right. Well, because do they do the same thing that salsa companies do? Because they put a little chili pepper on there, but it's like Old Navy pants. Like their scale is completely, there's no precision to that. So annoying. Speaking of Old Navy pants. We were talking about it the other day. You can be one size in one pair and then two sizes up or down, any which direction in another pair. This one has a- So I can't read that, but that has- It says negative eight to negative six sweet. Negative eight to negative six. I think the sweetest is maybe 10. On the negori. On the sweetness scale, yeah. They must have, it must be like a measurement of sugar. It is. It relates to the hydrometer, I think. That tastes about a negative three to me. I'm telling you, whoever puts three out of four chili peppers on the back of the salsa is lying right to your face. That's like everything Trader Joe's has that's jalapeno flavored is not spicy at all. It's like a whisper of a jalapeno. Makes no sense. It's not going to be started. Anything that says ghost pepper, but it's like the last ingredient on the ingredient list. There's more yellow number five in there than there is ghost pepper. Well, so a lot of restaurants pour saké warm and it's created a weird misconception among a lot of Americans. Warm is relatively traditional, but they can be served cold to warm. As far as the temperature thing, so traditionally saké was heated because back in the day before we had steel tanks and whatever, saké would be stored in these really gruff wooden barrels and it would put all this super oaky really intense textural There are also issues with like lactic acid and stuff. You know what they should have done is used a lot of sugar and bitters like everybody in the Prolovision. Right. Sakatini. Sakatumi. Old saké fashion. That would be the Edo period. As time has progressed and we no longer have to store them in these wooden barrels, now it's more of a preference thing. It also used to be used for the cheaper saké which wasn't as of high quality. That's kind of not a thing nowadays. You're pretty much guaranteed, no matter what price the saké is, that it will be decent. There's even a category called futsushu, which is like food grade rice, and that is still good and drinkable. I've had one and I thought it was really nice. But now heating up saké is more of a style choice or a preference that people have when they're drinking. You can drink saké from lightly chilled all the way up to warm. There's only a few that you wouldn't want to warm up, and that would be Junmai Daiginjo, which is the highest level of polished rice. Those ones are going to be super delicate and more feminine. They have like really complex and subtle flavors. And so if you warm them up, then you're going to lose like all of those more delicate, fruity flavors. And then the Nagori's, as we discussed earlier, would be gross. The warm, the warm, the meanest would be gross. And warming up Saké typically does best for the more like umami rich, earthy, nutty flavors. It just really kind of rounds those out and brings those out. You can warm up Saké that's more fruit forward, but it's going to just kind of like heighten the alcohol like flavor to it. And then you lose a little bit of that fruitiness. Some people like that. Other people don't. I don't, I personally wouldn't do that. I personally like to have all of my Saké either very lightly chilled or room temperature. I just think that you can get the most out of the flavors that way, but that's just my personal preference. Yeah, I think you can go anywhere from say 45 to max. So when you're talking about warm, we're talking like a max of 130. You're not gonna boil this stuff. So if someone did want to heat up their Saké at home, how would they do so? I mean, you're not popping that baby in the microwave. Absolutely not. So it's a bit of like a double boiler situation. So you would have your heat safe carafe, which typically called a Tancura or Tancuri. It's like T-E-N-K-K-U-R-I, I think. That's the traditional carafe. But you would heat up some water, boil your water, and then put your Saké in this carafe, put it in the water, and then using a digital thermometer, you can check the temperature, the kind of the highest you would ever want to go is going to be 133 I don't have any frame of reference of how hot that is. Can you give it to me in soups? It's warm soup. Warm soup. Yeah. It's not burn your mouth. I have a little meter for what they call it in Japanese, and then what it is in English. Oh, that's neat. 133 degrees Fahrenheit in English. It's very hot, Saké. Oh, that's helpful. In Japanese, it's Tobikirikan. Tobikirikan. Okay. Sounds pretty good. If you were to lightly chill something, it would be called autumn breeze. That's beautiful. How pleasant. That sounds refreshing. It's all reflections of Shinto, the belief in nature as God. Saké was very- Kami. Involved in that religion. Shinto ceremony. Yeah, when it was getting popular back in the day, a lot of what it was used for was ceremonies related to the changing of the seasons and stuff like that or celebrations. Speaking of the temperature and traditions and the cups, Saké should not be pounded. It's a little bit higher alcohol in general than wine. Typically, it flows around 16 percent, sometimes a little bit below, sometimes a little above. If it's a Honjozo, it's usually a little bit above. The cups are so small for a few reasons. One being that because temperature is so intentional with the way that we drink Saké, it's small so that we can drink it enough before the temperature changes. The same reason we have stems on wine glasses. And those tiny little beer glasses. Yeah. One of the other reasons that they're so small is that the host wants to be able to refill your glass so that they can show that they're attentive and caring and being a good husband. And generous. And generous. The more that I'm giving you, the more I can show you that. Well, that's just inconvenient. It's very similar to a Japanese tea ceremony where there are certain symbolic things like pouring for others and showing abundance. All of that stuff. It's pretty cool. But I feel guilty when people are nice to me. Yeah, right. Or suspicious. Suspicion builds on respect for others is not for me. I guess as part of it, you have to learn how nice it feels to accept kindness. Yeah. That is a hard thing in our culture, I think, for a lot of people accepting kindness. It is. Because we're taught not to rely on people. We're so independent. We're self-reliant. We're big trucks, trucks, truck nuts, and whatnot. So this next one that we're gonna try is called Fukucho Seaside. It's a Junmai again, but this one is sparkling. It's actually made similar to a Pet Nat, if anyone's ever heard of those. What is that, Neeve? It's Petulant Natural. It's actually the first form of- Petulant Natural? Oh yeah. I have that in abundance. It is the first way that sparkling wine, second fermentation is done within the bottle. So it's a little bit harder to make us very specific flavors, kind of different. No disgorgement. Exactly. So this one does have its second fermentation in the bottle. So it's got a little bit of a tiny funk to it. But in a very pleasant way, don't discount it yet, listeners. So this one is, I think it's really cool. I really enjoy the story behind it. It's made in Hiroshima and the Toji, the Brewmasters, one of the few female or women Brewmasters, which is another really cool thing. She makes it with the intention that it will transport you to Hiroshima in a positive light before Hiroshima was known for negative things. It was known for being a really serene seaside town. So they're known for shellfish, for their seafood, for salinity, and fresh air, and ocean breezes, stuff like that. So the intention behind this saké is to transport you to that place and have you, when you're drinking it, you're going to taste like the salinity, you're going to taste like all these crisp, more refreshing flavors, and when you're drinking it, you Again, I feel like it's bringing in that notion of kami, of the natural world being god-like, and something to revere, which is beautiful, and especially given the history of that city, a very, very sad history of that city. Okay, it smells amazing, seaside, sparkling Junmai. It smells amazing. It smells like a combination of like cocoa powder and tropical fruit at the same time, and then when you taste it, it's completely different. I mean, those flavors are there, but the zip and the sparkle is up front and the salinity. Yeah, you cannot miss it. Yeah. I haven't tasted it yet, but at the nose, I get just the barest hint of like soft, like a malphy coast lemons, like you would get in a limoncello or Meyer lemon or something. Yeah, for sure. I am going to buy a bottle of this and take it home today. Please do. I try to sell this saké all the time, because I just think it has so much beautiful meaning behind it. And it's really cool. And people are very apprehensive about it for some reason. It's super interesting. I like it. I'm really into that. Super interesting. Very good. It has a bitter streak that runs right down the center of your tongue. Yeah. Like a lemon pith. Yeah. And most of these sakés are not acidic. And bitterness is a great counterpoint in the absence of acidity, in my opinion. Like if you ever drink like Southern Rhone White, where the acidity is pretty low, but you get that bitter streak that helps keep it lifted. This is super complex. It's just so fruity. It's definitely not sweet by any means, but it has that good fruit that balances out. It's not overly dry, the slight bubble. It's more like a fizz than really a bubble. Frizzante, which you could say. Much more, yeah, which is in line with what you were saying in the Pet Nat style. It does taste so good. It's so refreshing. This is like summer in your mouth, and it's just great. Yes. I'm glad that you guys are enjoying it. Fukucho, seaside. It comes in a little UV light protecting bag. Oh, that's what that is? Yeah. That's great. Isn't that kind of fun? Smart. That's just like a rotor or crystal. Do they want to be the moose head of Saké's? It's guaranteed skunk to the minute you get it. That can happen. Different warm temperatures lead to different and light lead to different problems in Saké. But yeah, actually bitterness is a big problem with Saké that's stored in warm conditions and the development of lactic acid. Neeve, how much is this bottle? Okay. 30 bones. That's a world class product though. So all the other sparkling Saké's that we carry are between like 8 to 10 dollars. Not to discount them as not being up to par, but I think this one is definitely like worth it. To me is just a lot better. It's very complex compared to those ones are typically pretty simple. And I just think it has like a lot going for it. Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean, initially if you're not familiar with the category, $30 might would seem, you might get some sticker shock from the size of the bottle. It's smaller than a 750 milliliter. And for something you may not be familiar with, but the quality of the product obviously speaks for itself. We're all raving about it. But going back to what you mentioned just about Saké in general and the care that goes into it and the idea behind it, I think all of those factors, $30 is not asking a lot for this product. And again, not to discredit the other Sparkling Saké, but it's a little bit of like a gimmick within the category. Like not a lot of people do it. And when they do have them, they're not typically, in my opinion, done as well as they're still Saké. And we do have some that are flavored. The Yuzu one is really good. The other, we have a peach and a floral one, which in my opinion are just kind of like sweet. They're very much like to the American audience and the way that it's just like shockingly sweet. We like big dumb mobbiest things. Whereas this one, you can tell it is done with intention. It's done well. That's why I like it. That's why I try to sell that one so much. I just really am supportive of it. I want to be drinking this in the park with my seasonal cold cut sub. Enjoying the sunshine and the nice breeze. For reference, the other bottles that we tried, the Hawk in the Heavens, that one's a smaller bottle. Should we address bottle size? Because Saké sizes are weird. Yeah, we probably should. The smaller bottle is 300 milliliters, Hawk in the Heavens, and I want to say that one's $13.99 or $14.99 on the shelf. And the Countless Visions, I believe, is, I want to say 10 to 12.99. I can't quite remember. The Fukucho is 30. It's either 29.99 or it's 30.99. The next two that we're going to try, the Sunrise Junmai Ginjo, that one, I want to say 34.99. And the last one we're going to try, the Junmai Daiginjo, that one is $80, 79.99. Which when I talk about it, you're going to see why the Junmai Daiginjo is like the most polished. It's kind of like the more refined parts of our category within the sake, which is why they tend to be a little bit more expensive. We have some that are around like $40 and then the most expensive one that we carry is 200. That's this one here. We're not going to try it, but I just brought it. We're not going to try it. It's in a fancy box. It is in a fancy box. I just brought it up here so that we could look at it. But yeah. Boo. $80 is honestly, I don't think it's that outrageous. It's just a lot of people are unfamiliar with Saké and so when they see the more expensive Saké, they're like, oh. I mean, we're talking about Little Brewery's tiny artisan producers here who are spending a lot of time making this stuff. I mean, we didn't get too much deep into the production side, but some really interesting things have happened. You have to have the Koji inoculated rice. You have to let it ferment and the cool thing is that the Koji is converting starch into sugar at the same time that the yeast is producing alcohol, unlike beer, which is also brewed, where the starch is all converted and then you pitch the yeast. So it's a simultaneous process. So I was going to ask about this. So we're talking about rice, water, yeast, and mold. Correct. And you're saying that the mold and the yeast are applied essentially at the same time. They're working in conjunction with each other, yes. So starch conversion and fermentation are simultaneous. The yeast is eating the sugar, the mold is eating the starch and making sugar. So the Koji is put on first for about two days, usually two and a half days, and then the yeast is added and then they sit there together for a little while. Oh man. And in the higher grades, there are often multiple additions. So I think Ginjo and Daiginjo ferment for like 30 days. They're long ferments. And at various points during the ferment, you add more inoculated rice, more Koji and more yeast and it just keeps going. What a weird complex thing. Yeah. So one of the things I've never understood, the mold is on the rice and the yeast is in there. In wine, in beer, it's a soup. It's just liquid. How much liquid is involved with the rice? There's water. It's just brewing like a vat. Yeah. I think it's like 80% of it is water. I mean, when it's just got the Koji on it, it's just steamed rice and they sprinkle it on top. And then after it sits there for a little bit, it kind of looks like the rice is covered in frosting or like somebody blew some snow on it or something. And that's how you know the Koji is doing its thing. It's ready. And then you add the yeast. Excellent point. The rice is in fact steamed first. This is not like raw rice. Yeah. It has to be steamed in order to create the environment for exactly all the funky stuff to have. For the aspergillus to grow. This is a lot. Exactly. It can be confusing, which I think is another reason why people tend not to care about it. It is because they hear it and then they get, they're like, that's so much information. I don't know if I'm going to retain that. I mean, I've probably looked up how Saké is made 80 times or like 50 times or whatever, just to keep it refreshed in my brain, especially talking about wine all day. I'm much more familiar with saying that process or explaining that to people than Saké. Well, you don't learn all of wine in a day. Exactly. In a sitting, you pick it up over time. You're getting the entire category. We're getting the entire category in a flight right now. Yeah, exactly. Going back to why some Saké's are so expensive, not only are the breweries small, but a lot of them are family owned and there's like five or less people working there, or there's just not a lot of people working there. A lot of the breweries, because they're so historical, have been around for hundreds of years. They do a lot of community outreach stuff. They work with the town that they're in. I don't know, whatever- The prefecture? Yeah, they do a lot of sponsoring celebrations and stuff like that. I've heard about it, quite a few different ones doing stuff like that. Not only are they making this product that takes time to make and they do it so specifically, but there's not a lot of them doing it in each brewery, and then they're also focusing their time to help the rest of their community. Wow. It costs a lot because it's a product with intention and care. Exactly, and care behind it, and the people who are making it not only care about it, but they care about what's surrounding them. Going back to the religion aspect, like the nature is so important and nature is so intrinsic to the product that they have to care for it in order to care for the product. What do we have now? The next one we have is Sunrise, Junmai Ginjo. So this would be the next level up of Polished from Junmai. This one would be, I want to say 60. Yeah. Minimum of 60% polished. This one I picked because I think it's probably, the ones I picked before were a little bit kind of like outliers within their categories. This one's going to be pretty typical. Lots of melon, going to have some like grassy notes to it. Pretty refreshing, clean, crisp. You're saying those words and that's exactly what I'm thinking is. I'm smelling this. It really it's back to fruit and it's back to like this compact little round kind of. There's a hint of like lemongrass in the nose I get. Neato. A lot of green apple. Yeah. Clean is like the perfect descriptor. I don't know another way to describe this wine or the sake. That's one of the words that I use probably the most often when I'm selling to the customers is like clean and refreshing and crisp. Well, the sake in particular, but most sake is really cool in the way that they have this slightly fleshy, more textural feel when it's in your mouth. Then once you've swallowed it, it just finishes so refreshing and it doesn't leave any lasting residue in that sense. It's very refreshing. There's a dusting of something at the finish. I agree. It's a little spicy on the finish. Is that what it is? That's what I get. A little hint of white pepper. Lift and character. Yeah. Pepper. White pepper. In this case, we've got, I think, Ethyl Caparite, which gives you that apple flavor. See, this is what he does. He knows the scientific names of the ester compounds. I just made that up. Ethyl Caparite, everybody. It has so many different flavor profiles that we're all pointing out, but then at the same time, not a single one stands out above the rest. This would lend itself so nicely to so many different foods. You could pair this with almost anything I'd be willing to bet except for dessert or something. Chocolate cake. Yeah. You know what, I bet it would be great with chocolate cake now that I say that. I would go with Chawanmushi. What's that? Custard. I think that would be nice with it. Savory custard. Oh, see, we should have catered some when I had- We thought you were cooking. Yeah, sorry. In the microwave. This makes me crave crunchy salty things. This with chips or popcorn and I would be in heaven. Snacks, go to a sake bar. It's all about little snacks. Not that I'd be into this specifically, but I bet this would go good with the spicy chicken sandwich. You can do fried chicken, that kind of thing. Sure. That's why sake is so huge in Nashville. Yeah. Is it? No. No. I'm just making stuff up. You can't even tell me that. Because the last sake presentation I did was all about food pairing with sake and how you can have so many different cuisines and stuff with sake. So I was like, they figured it out. Buffalo chicken was one of the things that we paired with sake actually. That makes sense. There you go. Yeah. A relative to natural hot. All right. Now, just because I want to know. Okay. So then the yeast and the mold do their thing and it converts more and more. Then they must have to filter it or something. Then they must have to age it in a tank before putting it into the serving vessel, the bottle or whatever. Yeah. I do believe that they age in bottle as well. I have my little cheese sheet over here. Yeah. Do they filter it first of all? Yeah. It's definitely filtered. They do filter it. Floss or through something more complicated like wine is. Activated charcoal tablet. That's a good question. I'm not 100 percent sure on that. All right. Filtering techniques, I don't know. Skip the question. It's okay. Now I got to look it up. It's fine. Although this is a weird fact. If you want just like weird esoterica. That's why the kids listen, Chris. Well, kids, let me tell you. Aspergillus is the name of the mold. The guy who discovered it looked at it and thought it looked like the holy water shaker that's used in the Catholic Church is like a little baton. If you look at these under the microscope, they look exactly like that. The weird thing is, I can't remember the name of the thing, but the root word is to sparge, which means to sprinkle with water, which makes sense. But sparging is a technique that they use to get all of the sugar off of malts when you're making beer. Of course, you don't sparge, I don't think, with Saké. I know. It's a whole journey there. Brought us back to the beginning. Absolutely nothing. Just distracting from filtering. It ferments in steel tanks, but then it's matured in bottles. So they bottle it, they pasteurize it in the bottle, and then it's matured in the bottle. Got it. Unless it's Dama. Does that mean unpasteurized? Yeah. Context clues. Namazake, unpasteurized Saké. Unpasteurized Saké is usually a little bit more aggressive in its flavor. It's very bold. It's very fresh and intense, usually higher alcohol as well, and it should be refrigerated. Otherwise, it goes a little crazy. True. Where are we going next? To the last saké. Sadly. So this last one, I think is pretty cool. This is one that's $80, it's $79.99. Okay, now that she's broken the seal, do we tell her? Oh, we had a $78.99 cap on this. So sorry. So this one is Junmai Daiginjo, minimum of 50% polishing. So this is the highest level of saké. It's gonna be the most like refined, typically more delicate, feminine, usually more floral. This one in particular is really cool because it's done in typically what is used for competition style sakés. It's, instead of being pressed, the saké being pressed out of the mash of rice, it's hung in a giant cheese cloth. That's why it's called Divine Droplets. Because it slowly drips out. Traditionally, it was made in an igloo, in this process that involves the ice. But due to global warming, they had to switch and it's no longer made in these igloo huts which was for temperature. Now it's just made normally, but outside of an igloo. Why is outside of an igloo normal? But this one is just really cool because hanging it in the cheesecloth and having it drip out slowly has more contact with the rice in that way. It is going to have a little bit of a richer style to it, which again, not too common for this category, but it still should maintain that more delicate side to it. And if you guys noticed, as we've tasted through these sakés, the Hawk in the Heavens, which is going to be the richest most umami one that we tried, is going to have a little bit of a more golden color to it. Looks more like a kind of buttery chardonnay, I guess. And then the Sunrise one will have a little bit of a gold to it, but it's going to be slightly brighter. And then this Junmai Daiginjo is the pay list of them. It still will have just a slight yellowish tinge to it, but it's going to look pretty much like water, just because it's been so polished and refined. So refined, yeah. So very refined. It is by far the most elegant nose of all of them. I mean, it's flowers on top. It smells like $90. It's nice. $80. $80. It smells like $80. It smells like $90, tastes like $80. There's like a fluffiness to the palate. I never know what to call that, because it's a flavor that you never get in so many other things that we try. And I don't want to say it's mushroom or earth, because that implies like dirt, and it's not dirty, but it's like, it's kind of savory, but it's like, I don't know. I literally don't know how to describe it. Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. I don't know how to describe it either, because when we say savory or salty or dirty, like it's very, very subtle. Like I don't want to leave the impression that this tastes like dirt in a glass, because it doesn't. It's like cocoa powder on a marshmallow made of cream. It does have such a marshmallow-y soft texture. Like it's really pleasant to drink. I mean, it's just very, very well done. Chris, put scientific words to it in Latin, please. Quid pro quo. Ad hoc. There's like a minerality to it, but. I kind of take, like the finish, I kind of, I get like cantaloupe rind a little bit. There's like just that very subtle fruitiness, but not sweet fruit. Yeah. All these flavors are really tiny and woven together in this delicate way, but like if they were amped up, they would be crazy. Like there's like orange cream. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I think that's, that's what the, maybe one of the major characteristics is, is that everything is, is softened by this creaminess. Yeah. It's quite, quite elegant, quite refined and also quite complex. There's a lot going on here. It's like subtle. There's some dryness. Like my mouth feels a little dry right now. I don't know that I'd describe that as tanned and necessarily though, but. It has like a lasting effect. But it definitely isn't drying in the way that tannin is. Yeah. Certainly not. Yeah. But it definitely has a little bit of a longer finish. It is a long, long finish. All right. Well, what the hell? What do you serve this with? What food? Any type of fatty fish. If you didn't want to go the traditional route, you could do like a white meat, like a chicken, maybe like a glazed chicken that has something slightly sweet on it, I think would be really good. I bet it'd be good with funky mushrooms, like truffle and that kind of thing. Oh, it probably would be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Truffle risotto. That'd be awesome. It would be good. It'd be like a super dark chocolate, like with the cocoa powder dusting on it. Some Matsutake mushrooms. I had some black truffle risotto in Napa one time that I still think about, two years, three years later. You occasionally taste still. Oh yeah. It was at Chappellay. We had dinner there with the family. Oh God. If any food will haunt you, it's truffles. Yeah. And this would be great with that. This is definitely like whenever people ask for a saké for a gift, I always point this one out just because it has like something cool and fun different about it, and it's just done so well that I think anyone would be able to appreciate it. Okay. Not to beat up on this, but if you serve this too cold, it would be simple. If you served it too hot, it would be really weird. Yeah. And it would lose all of its elegance. Cool is the perfect word for this. It's like yes, slightly below room temperature, so it's just interesting. And I think my go-to food with this would definitely be sashimi, just raw fish. Oh yeah. Yes. That would be delightful. Raw eel. No. And salmon is sake, right? Yeah. There we go. Good times. Yeah. And it would be great with some salmon sashimi. Totally. What else we got? Random side note, but I do think that a lot of sake would also be really good with Greek or Mediterranean food. Yes. I think a lot of Greek wines kind of have similar like brightness, salinity, a little bit of like- Exactly. I think I always try to point people over to sake when they're like, oh, I want to try a new wine with this food. I'm like, you could also try a sake. I think that's a great idea. I can imagine like lemony grilled Mediterranean sea bass. Oh, yeah. Or any kind of shellfish. Any kind of shellfish, even yogurt sauces I think would be really good with this. Oh, man. This is a category to explore. People need to not sleep on sake. Seriously. It's definitely not as scary as people think. It's definitely more approachable than people think and it's worth trying. As I said before, with nowadays, no sake is really bad. If you don't want to dive right in to the $30, $40 bottles, we do have bottles that are $10 to $20 that are also equally as good. They may not have as many complexities, but they're still going to be really solid. And sweet, there are sweet options and fruit-flavored options, too, for maybe some Moscato drinkers, are still Rosa fans, would definitely find some sake options that they would like to, if they're looking for something new. Definitely. I mean, sake is a wide variety from things that are very, very sweet all the way till they have sake that are intentionally super dry or extra dry. And usually the dry ones will denote on the label extra dry. So easy to find those ones. Cool. Wow. Okay. Well, this is fabulous. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you, Neeve. Neeve for walking us through these. And if you enjoy our podcast a percentage as much as I enjoy trying new stuff like this, you should leave us a review on your podcasting platform of your choice. Hit us up on social media with your questions. I haven't done that in a while. Give us a question. At bennysbev on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. And YouTube. Yes. Check us out on the YouTube reel. What do they call it on YouTube? YouTube Shorts. We're on there. We are on the Shorts. We've got four solid Shorts out right now. Our latest just got like 5,000 views. We're making it. We're big. We're a big deal. Also, you can ask Neeve questions. Here's her cell phone number. Yeah. Feel free to reach out day or night. In front of the Saké section, at the Binny's and Lincoln Park. Yeah. The only question you can ask Neeve is, who were you on that podcast with? Because she has no idea. But truly, if you're in the Lincoln Park area or in the Chicago area at all and you come up to our Lincoln Park store, find Neeve. She's got a beautiful Saké selection here. As you can tell, great knowledge on the subject. So please visit. She sells wine too. Yeah, that too. I do also sell wine. Binny's all-star. Thank you, Neeve. You're welcome. And thank you for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Back in your feed next week with something definitely not as good as this. Until then, I'm Greg. I'm Chris. I'm Jonah. I was Neeve. Keep tasting.