Namazake - The Story of Unpasteurized Sake

0:19Welcome to Sake Deep Dive, the sake podcast for the beyond beginner. As always, in this, our goodness gracious, I think we've surpassed four years now, our fifth year on the air, we are bringing you the inside scoop on sake's untold stories. As always, I am your co-host, Jim Ryan, writer, translator, sake drinker, down in Yamaguchi Prefecture, joined, as always, by my friend and co-host, Andrew Russell. Andy, how you doing? I am good, Jim. Good to see you. Good to speak to you. Good to hear what's been going on in your hectic life. Both of us are just sort of neck deep in all kinds of stuff these days.

1:12Yeah, all kinds of things going on in the background. Visiting big shots in Tokyo and celebrating changes. What's new with you Andy As fall has swept through the archipelago Not a lot really I've just been trying to enjoy Kyoto Obviously Kyoto is famous for its beauty at this time of year And I have to say it hasn't disappointed The Kamogawa is stunning right now It probably won't last very long Because as we all thought The autumn is going to be blink And you'll miss it It's already feeling like winter But for that very fleeting moment The leaves Were everything that they Promise you of Kyoto at this time of year So yeah just trying to enjoy As much of that as possible In the brewery every day obviously And obviously Kanzaki is the way From now until Until next year Right, kan sake Gotta make sure to get things nice and hot When you're dealing with sake Because if you don't get it nice and hot Then it just, it's raw, right?

2:31Yeah, we haven't done one of those segues properly in a while So I commend you for bringing back that little tradition of ours So well done Jim, that was good Right, it was languishing and I felt the need to squeeze it back into shape because, of course, we need to tell the audience what we're talking about. And what we're talking about this time is it's not déjà vu. It's not something we've talked about specifically, but it is something that we have talked about a lot. What are we talking about today? We're talking about namazaki, but I have to admit, I literally scoured through our back catalogue because I was convinced just like last week's episode actually I was absolutely convinced we had done this before but it turns out we haven't you know it just has to be it's like it's a word that we say almost every time guys I mean it's just such a universal thing and obviously we talked we did an episode about hiire which you can't talk about that without talking about nama but um yeah apparently we have not done an episode on namazake which is just wild crazy yeah and uh yeah i think this time it's going to be very um i think it's going to be what do you call it more social more historical not quite so much the uh the the the nerdy scientific what But it is namazake stuff more along the lines of what's the deal with namazake as a thing, as a product, as a cultural item, as something that people seek out when they are shopping for sake.

4:22And it's a story that surprised me because it's longer than I thought it was. I thought this was a very, very recent thing, you know, the talk about namazake. But apparently it goes back a while, right? So I think, Andy, you're the expert on this. I fumbled around, but you seem to have all kinds of inside scoop, as you usually do. So talk to us. When we're talking about namazake as a commercial product, where do we go back to? the like what is it this is it come with the ginjo stuff in the 90s is it with the advent of Yamato's cool cool refrigerator trucks in the 2000s maybe yeah this was a surprise to me as well before I started researching this Nama goes back much further than ginjo but the two later in their story become intertwined or I'm convinced they become intertwined.

5:35But the story of Nama does start with Kikusui Funaguchi. Now we talk about this quite a lot on the podcast. There's a lot of claims being made in the sake industry. We're the first to do this. We're the first to do that. And a lot of the time you research them and it turns out maybe not quite the first or maybe the story has been embellished somewhat but as far as I can see this time it's true. Kikusui Funaguchi seems to be the first commercially available Namazaki and it was released in 1972 so we think of Ginjo as being what early 90s so we're talking 20 years before the Ginjo story. So we're still on the old Kube Tsuseido.

6:26We're two decades away from the Tokute Meishoshu system. It's completely its own story in that sense. But Kikusui, it must have come like a bolt from the blue. If you can consider the time period, sake is being mostly drank warm it's going to be what we i guess what we would now call futsushu the vast majority of it of course they didn't call it futsushu that that term didn't exist either then but namazaki would have come as something completely different but as i was just saying to you off air it seems not really had a big impact which is quite bizarre because 1972 is when the Kikusui Funaguchi was launched but the next step in the the story of Nama is about another 10 years later in fact longer than 10 years later in what some people call the Nama boom.

7:32Now the Nama boom is quite interesting. I found an old essay from I'm guessing it's people that work in some capacity for the tax office. And they claim that this was their idea to start promoting Namazaki. And the reason for this was that sake was in a real slump at the time. Now, that would be true. This is after sake has peaked, its famous peak in the 70s. And then since that point, it has been on a quite constant decline in consumption. So this was one of the ideas that he came up with to try and rejuvenate the industry to try and do something new. So had you ever heard of this Nama boom? Because I have to admit, it was the first time I'd ever heard of it when I started doing this research.

8:27I'd never heard any sort of mention, oh yes, there was a Nama boom. I had And like, you know, whenever like breweries are promoting Nama, they always talk about how it used to be this really special thing. You can only get at the brewery and stuff like that. But the idea of sort of any kind of promotion or any kind of like really big market push for it, it's not something I'd encountered before. And I just want to say just a minute. I just want to clarify. So when you say Funoguchi was the first commercial, the available Nama product, it was in the can from the beginning, right? Oh, yes. The can was from 1972.

9:09Yes, the can was the beginning of it. And the can is very important as well, obviously, because bear in mind, you have to think about the time that we're in. Japan is just starting to get things like refrigerators and things. This is the 70s. So the concept of Nama must have been like crazy to consumers. Like what on earth even is this? People hadn't tried it before. It seems to be that in that 10 years between Kikusui Funaguchi and what, like I said, some people are calling a boom. Others are saying that I wouldn't go as far as to call a boom. but during that time it is true that a few breweries begin to start to offer it on their premises I guess maybe as an incentive it's it seems to be not not as common anymore but it would have been almost a given that breweries would have had a shop small local breweries and they would have sold their sake from the shop almost all the breweries I've worked for apart from Kenbishi, have a small shop attached to them where you can buy their product.

10:25And it seems that that was one of the only ways you could get Namazaki, is to actually go to the brewery. But from what I've said, they weren't selling it, they were just kind of letting people try it as a kind of novelty or hook maybe to get people to the brewery. And I think Philip Harper's pointed that out in his book, that Nama was a perk of the job. You got to try this crazy unpasteurised sake, possibly when the boss wasn't looking, whenever there's been a new press or whatever. I've done that several times, probably more than I should mention. But before Nama was a thing, it really would have been confined to a privilege of the brewers.

11:13And then a few breweries start to offer it. but there's nothing, no one stands out in that regard. Really, the name that comes up is Kikusui. I don't think we've actually talked about it, so it's quite important for our listeners to understand that obviously the reason for it being in a can is to protect the sake, that makes sense. They did a few quite novel things for the release. For example, a one cup is 180 milliliters, but obviously there's always a bit of air In one cups or bottles or whatever You don't fill them to the brim obviously But the Funaguchi can is filled to the brim It's 200 milliliters of liquid that you get in that can And all of that was done to make sure that the sake didn't get any oxygen And the fact obviously it's in a can So it's being protected from sunlight and things So yeah, it's really way ahead of its time when you think about that almost my guess is there was so ahead of its time that it just kind of seems to have slipped under the radar for for this amount of time because although kikusui talk about they were responsible for the nama boom it doesn't check out in the timeline so they are the the people that kick-started this but there seems to be a big gap between it actually starting to become something that consumers ought to wait off.

12:41Yeah, it is really interesting to me that like, one of the big conversations about advancements that we've had on this podcast in sake is all about sort of hygiene and keeping things really clean and the constant battle against spoilage in sake. And the fact that like in the 1970s, when I think bottles were still relatively new, right? I think they introduced the metal-capped one cups in the 60s for the Olympics and things like – it was a time when like the sake industry was just getting its feet under it in terms of modern sanitary distribution. like this really innovative way of drinking sake that has not really taken off even today that honestly consumers i personally love has been on the shelves from this one maker for longer than either of us have been alive is is pretty breathtaking um i gotta give it to them They really did something special there.

13:53So, yeah, hats off to the innovators at Kikusui. Yeah, I'll get this off my chest. I don't know, maybe you'll disagree with me. I prefer sake in a can than a one cup. Absolutely. Yeah, it's just easier to drink. And I don't know, there's not the same fear of dropping it or breaking it or what have you. It just feels nice in a can, particularly if you're drinking it, which let's be honest, the way they were probably intended, which was on the Shinkansen or maybe a express train somewhere with a bento. I don't know. Maybe that's just me. Yeah. No, I absolutely agree. You know, it's more portable.

14:39It's lighter. It's yeah, it's the kind of thing. And I'll be honest, if I see other sake in a can, it's almost an instant buy for me. But I don't know. Maybe that's just me being weird. Okay, so I think we've established them. We're both fans of not just Kanzake, but Kikusui Funaguchi. But that isn't the whole story of Namazaki. So as much as we probably want to wax lyrical about it all night, we do need to move on. Sure. So the next phase then, Kikusui is the beginning. The next phase then does appear to have been this so-called boom of the mid-80s. And like I said before, the impetus for this is they're trying to stop the stagnation of the sake industry where people are not drinking it anymore.

15:35It's not cool. And the image was that it's just an old man's drink. But NAMA, according to this essay, becomes a big part of reversing this negativity. So a few retailers, it appears that they've really tried to align it with beer or the way that beer is being drunk. And that would make sense because beer, of course, was one of Saki's big rivals. And I think it's fair to say it won the battle. Beer is like so many other countries It's the most consumed beverage And it's no different in Japan In fact it's way ahead of The nihonshu industry now So this is when you see These not Single serving, not ichigo But you start to see these 300ml bottles And we talked about this in the last Episode or maybe it was the Natsuzaki episode sorry These are, they're ubiquitous in Japan but they are very retro feeling now.

16:38They're usually in white frosted bottles and they're very distinct ones, you know, to look from. You get them in every single convenience store in Japan has at least one example. Hakatsuru do a very popular one. I think one of the big Fushimi breweries do one, but they're regional as well. There's Jizaki that come in that thing. And this was the kind of attempt and they would make, these were Nama. Nowadays, they're normally Namazume Or what's the other one Help me out Namachozo Whereas at this time They were nama nama Which I hate that term because it doesn't make any sense But nama is nama You can't get any more nama than that And they were brought out So people could try drinking sake In a different way So gone are the Warm sake and now you've got Chilled sake And this was a big change for the industry to go from drinking sake almost exclusively warm.

17:40Bear in mind, this is before ginjo. So there's no ginjo boom to get people drinking cold sake. So if this is accurate, it's nama, not ginjo, that makes the transition that we have nowadays from drinking predominantly warm sake into chilled sake. So it's a very significant moment for the sake industry. You know, it's interesting that you mention that because there's a thing that I think I mentioned in my book, but one of the sort of the breweries, the local breweries that I interviewed talked about one of their early products from the late 1980s, early 1990s being specifically aimed at beer, like at sort of approaching the idea of beer.

18:28basically of being drunk cold. So that idea is apparently just so fundamental to sake brewing in the sort of late 20th century of how do we get beer drinkers to start drinking sake again? Let's make it cold. It's fascinating. What's also fascinating is this has never really been documented. I couldn't find this anywhere other than this one essay that it isn't really putting the dots together, but they were obviously onto something back then. But no one has followed up on that to say that this is the story of Nama. It's all conjecture, but Nama seems to have been popularized on the basis of competing with beer.

19:16But of course, there's a few very significant problems that are still keeping it back. And that is the fact that there's just not the infrastructure yet for it. And of course, I think I talked about it before, this could be where Namatsume and Namachozo come in and that they are not Nama, they are pasteurised. So that would make it a lot easier for the brewers, but also able to capitalize on what would be a heightened awareness and probably a desire to be drinking something with Nama on the label. yeah it i i really kind of feel this i don't know almost a sense of of missing nostalgia i i wish i could have seen that because like the things that we're talking about sort of circulating around all of these enormous social and economic changes right like there's more refrigerators and there's more people with money to buy things that they just really want to buy instead of what they have to buy.

20:27And so you have all of these companies and producers struggling to get a small slice of this new, much larger pie of consumerism in Japan. And all of these things growing up around that, the cold chain logistics that allow for sake breweries to sell namazake safely across Japan, this growing distribution network, and it all connects to these things that we still know and love about Japan, like the Shinkansen network and the incredibly efficient delivery companies. It's like a story of Japan growing up into the bubble that was in the mid 80s to the 90s. That's absolutely it. You know, sake has had to, I guess, navigate all these changes.

21:29The industry is, you know, there's so much potential from the beverage, but it's not been able to release that full potential because of restraints. And once these restraints have been lifted, it's why it's such a good time to be a sake drinker today. We're in this era now where there's almost no limits And we can enjoy all these weird and wonderful different styles We can try Nama that's a day old Or from picking it up from our local brewery Or even in our local shop that comes from the other side of the country But all these things had to come into place for Nama Because we're talking about Nama tonight they all had to the infrastructure had to be there first because NAMA on its own was just too difficult to handle exactly the same as you I'd love being able to experience that but that's where me and you are both limited we were not born in this country and we're not that old either so we're just going to have to feed off the relatively little information we have but NAMA did face a lot of problems because it was so awkward to to deal with and apparently the biggest one was the expense of it people were charging about three times more than normal sake for namazaki because one it was a novelty but two it was very difficult to to store and transport and three the brewers were probably wanting some reward for their heightened risk because obviously it is a risk putting Nama out there into the world if the people that are handling it don't know how to look after it and someone gets a hold of one that hasn't been looked after and all of a sudden that it's the brewery that suffers the reputation for that not the handler that's the the just the nature of it and but there's one other thing as well that leads on from that apparently if you look at the time they were in as well the the people they had to convince were not necessarily the drinkers but the the money people and it did say in this essay that that the housewives who who controlled the purse strings they were the ones that were that were one of the biggest hurdles for it because they're just looking at it and seeing it's three times the price where's the justification for it so apparently that was one of the big problems that Nama had getting off the ground as well so yeah it really is so um closely connected to um the the cultural environment of the of the era yeah and one of the funny things about that is like you know you you you mentioned this single essay that talks about the nama boom and and obviously like there's just there's no talk about it, it didn't have any kind of lasting cultural impact.

24:31People still talk about the ginjo boom and the tangrei karakuchi boom. No one mentions the nama boom, but obviously it's here, right? Nama is a really solid segment of the modern sake market. And what's the line from that I don't want to call it failed experiment but the kind of fizzled attempt to make it a big thing to today so right yeah so whether or not it's a boom seems to be it seems to differ depending on who you speak to I'd never heard of a nama boom before obviously I've heard of the ginjo boom jizaki boom these are these are ones we like you just said these are ones we still talk about regularly today they seem to be very very significant but I'd never heard of anyone talking about the Nama boom so I made a couple of calls to people that were working in the industry at the time and the exact words were I wouldn't go as far as to call it a boom but if you were for example you were doing an event with your brewery then there was still a lot of cachet back then to having namazake it was still a novelty people would get excited about it so you could turn up at an event and say here's all our sake but we've also got this crazy new type called nama and this would have been in the early 90s so you've you've got just to recap you've got kikusui 10 years later you've got nama available in perfect size for sharing with most likely the restaurant izakaya environment to try and compete with beer you've then got products that are on the market but it's still a novelty by the early 90s and of course what happens in the early 90s is the ginjo boom so everything that we just talked about there are all these problems with distribution and things like that one imagines they ended when ginjo arrives because nearly all sake now is right or wrong debate it all you want but it's sent in cold chain shipping so even in japan the trucks turn up and they're all refrigerated and once they get unloaded they've got they're unloaded as quickly as possible and they're put into a refrigerator that's the nature of sake even junmai's and honjozo's even some futsushu nowadays they're fruity aromatic and light it it's just the way the industry has gone people have decided that ginjo is what they should be making and the lines are now extremely blurred between june my honjozo and the the four categories of of ginjo so that again there's there's nowhere because there's no nothing documented about this really this the journey up until now that it seems to be that namazaki would have piggyback on the infrastructure that was put in place to deal with ginjo because unlike nama ginjo was a massive deal for for the industry it's it's all people talk about nowadays it seems to be all people want to talk about is ginjo and if all of a sudden you've got the the things being put in place to handle this highly aromatic sake then nama's an easy fit because it can just go next to that and that's really how it goes if you look in a well-stocked sake shop they've got all the ginjos next to the nama sake in the fridge yep yeah it's just yeah just the way things are now yeah i guess because they can be but i mean you know you've got the you've got the infrastructure might as well use it but we should talk then because i've been dying to talk about this for the entire four or five years whenever we've been doing this podcast yeah but we should mention to people now now is our chance jim let's give okay namajuku its moment in the sun finally finally namajuku you know it it's it's amazing to me how rare it is to find people who will even consider that namajuku is is a thing to have despite the fact that there are breweries that that purposely make and sell it that despite the fact that like among my circle of of sake drinking buddies it is it's it's a treasure it's it's a thrill when you find a sake that someone left in the back of their fridge for five years and it's nama and you're like oh this is the good stuff because it like it's just so different so so unusual and so delicious almost all the time yeah well let's do it then let's let's get into this i mean i'm sure we're going to be covering old ground here but obviously conventional wisdom says is pick up any rough guide to sake.

30:12And the first thing you're going to read about namazaki is you must do this, you must do that. It can't be aged. You consume it as quickly as possible. And of course, there is truth in that. And that truth seems to stem from if you want to keep the sake in the condition that the maker intended you to drink it, then you have to do X, Y and Z. And that with Nama is keeping it as cold as possible and consuming it as young as possible. But like with everything in the sake industry, there's always exceptions. And Nama Juku is that exception. You don't have to do that with Nama sake. You don't have to drink Nama young.

31:03Some will do better than others. Some will be an absolute horror story If you don't follow those guidelines But others will become something simply incredible And it's interesting what you were saying there About people that like Namajuku They know when they've got something special, etc, etc But the other thing about Namajuku is Well, this dawned on me just the other day I know people that drink Namajuku All the time But I've heard them say You can't age Nama And the reason is It's probably some of the time People don't realise they're actually Drinking Nama Juku I mean if you say That you're a fan of Tamagawa spontaneous fermentation Like a lot of people do It's available In my home country It's available in your home country It's available in lots of parts of Europe you know we talk about tamagawa a lot in this podcast but um this is just one example because it's it's a popular one but if you look at japanese people as well when they're people are drinking similar products all the time and they don't actually realize that that's namajuku because it will never say on the label this is namajuku it's just not a thing to put that on the label but you can decipher for yourself quite easily if you're drinking namajuku and my recommendation is one just like that i bought it the other night not even considering that it was namajuku got it home and now i'm my third serving of it and i went ah of course that's namajuku it doesn't say anything on the label but it does say when it was brewed and it wasn't brewed this year it wasn't brewed last year and it says namazaki on the label so it's namajuku how that was done how that was achieved i don't know i'm going to need to investigate with the brewery but akishika another popular brand exactly the same if you drink okashika their premium brand i think it's two years i saw it myself when i visited the brewery it's just sat there in the tank and I don't know I think someone told me they've renovated their brewery or something but I went about five years ago now and there was no air conditioning units whatsoever I visited late summer and the the owner just said yeah we keep them in we keep it in a tank for a year it then gets bottled and then it does get refrigerated for another year as Nama and then it gets released so if you've drank akishika you've also drank namajuku so it's actually now that i think about it not that rare there's a lot of brands that this applies to so yeah it's just one of these again these weird things it would be it would be quite it would be quite dangerous for the industry if people just started saying no it's absolute nonsense you don't need to refrigerate or Consume Nama young Because there would be a lot of ruined sake But this kind of Absolutism that This must be obeyed Or this is going to happen to your sake No no, most Nama Is kept refrigerated Most Nama is consumed young But there's plenty other makers That will age it as well And that's called Nama Juku I mean who knows Maybe people could start putting it on the label What do you think the significant difference is between the ones that just fall apart and the ones that turn into something special?

34:54Like my instinct is to say it's probably sake that's focused on aromatics and sort of low alcohol lightness is going to be pretty fragile. but um i i can't i can't really be sure of that what do you think oh definitely it's those two things but i think probably more than that for me putting my brewer's hat on i think the the way that you make the moto it is gonna outdo those two those two factors but yeah low alcohol is obviously that's that's something so if we look at kikusui just go go right back to the beginning again and we take kikusui as the the og of namazake so what was the first the original incarnation of nama it was very high alcohol because they they knew that that higher alcohol content would offer some layer of protection to the sake that's why kikusui launched it at 19 and it's still 19 to this day and the reason now that alcohol levels have started to go down they went down on every stage that we mentioned there so when you talk about the nama boom they report that the the alcohol levels were starting to drop to the same level as normal sake because of course that would have been something that put people off and in the essay it does talk about this actually made it quite popular with the female demographic who didn't want to be drinking 19-20 % alcohol so it was something holding Nama back from before from its original release and then nowadays we come into the modern era and we talk about Natsuzake which is synonymous now with with Nama Zake which we talked about in the last episode and you've got low alcohol and the only way you can do that is because you've got vast improvements to cold storage and cold chain refrigeration and transportation so that element of it the the alcohol part but the moto part for me it's kind of incredible how much influence the moto has on the final product so many people nowadays are making well they're not making moto at all so some some it seems to be a trend that people are just skipping the moto altogether and when you do that you tend to get this very light very low in amino acid quite fragile sake whereas if you look at something like okay just looking at the breweries that i've made you look at something like Kenbishi, which is made with this really robust type of Yamaha, it takes 40 days to do one tank, really stresses the yeast, that's Kenbishi's style of brewing and they're not alone in that.

38:07And that type of sake tends to be less fragile than the other stuff. So I think that's the key and we just mentioned Akishika their Okushika brand as far as I know is either only Kimoto or Yamaha we mentioned Tamagawa which is either Kimoto or most of them are Yamaha spontaneous fermentation with ambient yeast which anyone that knows anything about the Tamagawa yeast knows that it's a real brew and philip does a brew or every year where they push through the legal limit of 22 and it gets classified as zashu so it's no surprise that these sake are really strong and really durable you know you've got more acidity coming in you've got more more amino acids You've got stronger, just generally stronger mash in general being pressed.

39:12That puts me in mind of a local brewery that does a nama juku every year. It's also, I think, it's one that I talk about a lot, Nakashimaya, and I've mentioned them several times for their Kanenaka. They do a traditional kimoto mototsuri brew every year. I wonder if that's what the nama juku is, because it's another very, very sort of thoroughly fermented, quite hefty kind of sake that they make there, which I think is probably why it ages so well, whether it's nama or not. so yeah it's interesting though that just to finish this nama juku conversation is as fun as it's been but the the ironic thing is it seems like kikusui or they've just been ignored their whole existence from the beginning and the whole conversation about nama it just seems like they've been kind of ignored the whole time as if they're not there when really they've they've really given us all the clues right from the beginning they were the first ones to to obviously bring it out into this very consumer friendly platform they've bring it as a nice a nice single serving can they've they've shown us the way to do it which was at the time the best option was higher alcohol so they they did that and there but now when you go on their website they literally say you can age this as well.

40:49You can do Nama Juku. You know, this is a very big company. They make a very wide portfolio of sake. And one of them is they're literally saying on their website, hey, take our Nama and age it if you want. And if you don't want to do it yourself, here's a ready-made one. Like it's out there in the public sphere and people are like, you can't age Nama. And you're like, there's literally a product in your supermarket. that you can go in and buy tomorrow is almost certainly going to be there in most a on mall and or any of these big big supermarket chains it's the red can and it's what aged for i think it's two three years or something like that maybe maybe i'm well i need to look it up but it's i'm looking at that i'm looking at it it's uh over one year at low temperatures there you go right so it's a ginjo right couldn't remember there was a ginjo so there you go so So there you go, folks.

41:46Namajuku is there. It's always been there. You've probably drank it. It's not that weird. But we'll have to do a disclaimer. If you try and do that with all of your sake, you might be in for some nasty surprises. So stick to the ones that you hear us talking about all the time or speak to someone who's as weird as we are. Maybe not that weird. and there's a good roadmap to this. There's some tried and tested brands where you're probably not going to be disappointed. And I will say this right now. I actually have on my shelf two cans of the green Funaguchi, the Shinmai Shinshu, that have been there since 2022.

42:35And I'm just wondering when I should open those up to see how they come out. I've got an idea. He said there's two of them. I think I do yeah you want one yeah well that would yeah that was a hint but yeah so the next time your pal Andy's in time let's get those open brilliant let's get those open see what happens after a few years on my shelf not low temperature not at all high temperature make them all the more interesting right so okay so yeah Nama in all its glory the story of Nama the joy of Nama Juku and I think hopefully we have expressed just how long this stuff has been on shelves because it really is amazing and that brings us to the highlight what Nama are you going to be recommending our listeners try and hunt down Andy?

43:37Okay this is a sake that I'm very excited about at the moment It seems to be everywhere I go it follows me there Which I'm delighted about But I'd never heard of this brand actually until I moved to Kyoto It's not in Kyoto but it might as well It's very close And it is Daijiro from Hatashuzo And this really is another one for people to add To that list that I gave them there of Akishika and Tamagawa So Daijiro I picked up a bottle Just a few weeks ago and I'm on my third serving Of it, it is a Jumai Kimoto Made from Yamada Nishiki They are quite into doing their own rice Cultivation, so it actually I think they have some sort of partnership going On, but it lists Who the farmer Was on the label So it's that kind of brewery Exactly, it's that kind of brewery And yeah, it's been aged Nama for BY05 So what, a couple of years?

44:40Two years Yeah, two years Maybe slightly more, maybe slightly less But it's fantastic It's a bit like Tamagawa Without the smack in the face That you sometimes get from spontaneous fermentation It's much smoother And I mean, I like Tamagawa for that reason But sometimes you want something A little bit more subdued And this is it It's daijiro It's just a little bit more subtle But it's brilliant But people are always going on about starter sakes And people should be introduced to ginjo first And all that I don't agree with that But if there's going to be a starter namajuku I'm putting it out there now That it should be daijiro I am excited to hear that That sounds like something that I should hunt down.

45:30Sounds like a thing that would be right up my alley. They're just next door in Shiga, quite close to Biwako. Although, why would you say that? Anywhere in Shiga is near Biwako. It's pretty much what Shiga is. It's the banks of Lake Biwa. All right. And my recommendation is basically something that we've been recommending the entire dang episode, and that is Kikusui. Drink it. I'm going to specifically recommend the Namajuku. It's in the red. It's basically a white can with red stripes and a red ring around the label, as opposed to sort of, you know, the gold of the Ginjo or whatever. It is the Jukusei.

46:13I would also like to recommend the black can, but I think I've actually recommended that before because that's the one with the Hashira Jouju. it's it's the added alcohol that's made from rice sake so it's it's distilled from from their own sake so but yes just drink it it's good it's been there it's it's in a lovely little can i mean come on what are you gonna do ignore it don't love it and that's it for another episode of Sake Deep Dive. Thank you so much for listening. I'd also like to give a special thanks to our Patreon supporters. Thank you so much for making this work the way it does. We are on patreon.com slash sake deep dive, all one word.

47:05If you want to get on there, everyone who supports us does get invited to our annual sake matsuri where we nerd out on Zoom and you get to talk to us and ask us questions and accuse us of leading you astray into the nefarious world of namajuku. And if you want to find more about me, although I have to admit my online presence these days is very little about sake because lots of other things are going on, but you can find me at my website, www.jimryan.com. Andy, where can they find you? One of my websites, www.originsake.com or you can also get me on originsakitours.com. My tours are running. They're actually a lot busier than I was anticipating, but definitely for 2026, if you're inclined to visit Japan's Saki capital of Nada, then I would be delighted to show you around.

48:08So check that out as well. I've taken the tour. It's fantastic. Highly recommended for anyone who loves sake. All right. So thanks again. I hope everybody keeps nice and warm. Warm up your sake and everything looks better from inside with a full tokuri. Make sure you drink responsibly and kanpai. Kanpai.

48:44Thank you.