Niigata - How Snow Country Sake Fueled the Jizake Boom

0:20Welcome to Sake Deep Dive, the sake podcast for the beyond beginner. I am your host, Jim Ryan, joined as always by my friend and co-host Andrew Russell. How are you doing today, Andy? I am good, Jim. Just got the new year off to a very nice start up in Hokkaido, where I was thinking of you in a very, very nice little tachinomi that I managed to stumble upon just outside my hotel. It's funny how these places just seem to find me these days. So, yeah, good start to the year. Although this is the season of the virus. So I am being attacked from all sides, it seems, by all manner of strange viruses and things that are trying to ruin my start to the year.

1:08Well, you know, when you've got when you've got small kids, particularly in nursery school age, there's a lot of there's a lot of attack vectors, a lot of gaps where they can get in. so yeah take care out there everybody i i knock on wood have been relatively healthy uh personally but uh yeah family has not escaped unscathed so mask up hands washed uh what do you call it uh gargle do what you can to keep safe out there folks so yeah and it is uh it is it is winter i think uh as winter as it can get we're finally down here in western japan where we're way below zero in the in the evenings although the days are still relatively uh comfortable not not not much snow around here yet you get a lot of snow up there andy not in kyoto it's it snowed the last couple of days but it doesn't last past 10 o 'clock The minute the sun comes up, it just disappears.

2:20Which is a bit of a shame because I've seen Kyoto once where there was reasonable snow and it's absolutely beautiful. It seems like a city that would really benefit from a bit of crystal decoration. Yeah, but I got my snow fix up in Hokkaido. That definitely didn't disappoint. There's plenty of snow up there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, and like it's weird. Living here in the Western Japan, we almost hardly get any. But I mean, I go probably five kilometers towards the other side of the island, that Sea of Japan side. And it's snow country all the way up. And speaking of snow country, we're going to be talking about the snow country today, right?

3:12We are. we talking about today yeah i was wondering when you were going to use that for one of your your famous segues we we are talking about nigata and i think this is kind of overdue for us i think if we're being we're being honest if you look back at all of our episodes we are both quite western japan yeah biased and it's not i don't think it's because well i'll speak for myself i don't think it's because we necessarily dislike sake from the other side of japan but living here and i've been in what hyogo prefecture now kyoto okayama before that and you're obviously down in yamaguchi i think when you're there it makes sense to drink the local stuff and you become more familiar with that and that becomes really your style so i think that's probably part of the reason why we we do mention these i mean you in particular jim most of your recommended sakes are from yamaguchi and that's absolutely fine most of mine are from hyogo or or the kansai region but tonight we're going to balance it out a bit and we're going to talk about Niigata, which is really quite incredible because we haven't really mentioned Niigata very often on this podcast.

4:38So yeah, it is, it is interesting. And I mean, obviously there's just sort of a personal kind of bias because, you know, drinking the sake of Western Japan, we just get used to it. But at the same time, in general terms, there's not a lot of Eastern Japan sake around here like the really big names obviously that you can get anywhere you we can get them here as well but you know it's it's not like there's a there's a shop where they're like oh yeah we're gonna go to all the trouble of finding tiny unknown brands from niigata to sell down here in yamaguchi it's uh it's not really a winning proposition so yeah like i think there's there's also just some access here but um you know we have we have i think mentioned a couple of times uh the niigata brand that you and i both seem to gravitate towards and kikusui right with the uh the uh the canned sake that that uh is just sort of the perfect form factor but yeah not a lot else for us to talk about so far.

5:52But that is a huge oversight, obviously, because it is an extremely important sake region. It has been quite, I think, influential in the development of the modern sake market. And I mean, when we talk about some of the names that we're going to get to today, they are names that everybody is going to know and care about. So yes, like you said, Andy, it's long overdue. So, and I think the problem I would have is where do we start? Like, what is it, I think maybe, what is it that makes Niigata a sake sort of powerhouse region? Because one thing that I do know is that it has 89 sake breweries. and considering the fact that niigata is a is a relatively low populated area like it's quite you know it's it's far from any of the major cities um the climatically it's it's made it quite difficult to make any really seriously huge urban areas so you know 89 sakaburis in a in a for for a relatively limited population is that's something else so like what what do you is behind that Andy?

7:06You're right it's quite incredible 89 is actually the highest number for a single prefecture so they they hold that record they don't hold the record or or even close to volume which is obviously they have Hyogo above them and then Kyoto in the number two position and then then it's Niigata but there's I think we talked about on one of the previous podcasts there's a huge drop off from those two down to third place but where they do win is in the sheer number of breweries so the Niigata region is quite interesting because it's a kind of rags to riches story and I've been looking into this in quite a lot of depth for something I'm working on at the moment and for all intents and purposes I really shouldn't like this region and probably knowing you what i mean by that is if you look at the development of nigata sake it comes from the meiji developments that happen when japan is hell-bent on modernizing and really destroying everything that they had before so everything from the Edo period.

8:23And the sake industry didn't escape that. There's loads of examples of things they did kind of cast aside for modernity. Things like Buddhism and things were hounded during that time. But the sake industry point is really the old Tokugawa system with this very kind of intuitive, kimoto-based, very complex and very high technique method of brewing sake that gets replaced with a very technical, science-driven approach. Now, I know why they did that, but I still think it was a higher level of technique before they did that. So out goes Kimoto and in comes things like Sokujo. Out goes Kiyoki and in comes things like Horotank.

9:15These are enamel tanks and things. Now, to give you an idea of where Niigata were before this, during the Edo period There's an interesting phrase that I've found And as a very proficient translator, you'll probably be able to step in It says, Tori Madagi Kome So, this is rice that's so bad that even birds step over it Now, this was something they used to say about the rice in Niigata. Now, this must have stuck in someone's craw because now Niigata is known as what the most famous rice producing region in Japan. They really embraced all the new technology that was available to them during the Meiji period.

10:08and they really turned things around. And of course, as we know, rice production and the sake industry tend to be in lockstep. When there's one developing strongly, then the other one is on the coattails, so to speak. And that's exactly what's happened in Niigata. Niigata has taken this modern approach to sake brewing. They were, for example, the first people to ever use enamel tanks, they had a very high uptake on Sokujo and cultured yeasts when the Kyokai Association started up. And breweries sprung up left, right and centre. So if you look at the dates on most of the breweries, there is a brewery that dates back to 1550, but most of them are in and around that Meiji period.

11:05Yeah. So, yeah, that's really a little snapshot of how that region blossoms. Yeah. You know, it's an interesting thing because obviously, you know, because they have succeeded so well, the land is there to grow lots and lots of high quality rice. but you know my understanding of rice is it's not a particularly cold weather friendly crop so it took a while for sort of the the researchers to breed and figure out how how to grow rice in areas with with you know those those much shorter summers um i think until very recently they couldn't grow rice at all in hokkaido it took quite a while to adjust things so yeah it was uh it was a sort of a late comer to major rice production and sake brewing but once they hit it they sure did hit it yeah absolutely yeah and anything you know after that initial growth sort of appearing the the the point at which niigata enters the story as we know it we're where sort of, you know, becoming a major player is right around that time when, you know, sake stopped becoming something that was purely local and started becoming kind of a national product that people sought out, you know, that period of, you know, the jizake boom and the following ginjo boom.

12:43Niigata was right there sort of at the very start because I think one of the first what they call Mabaroshi Megara the sort of the hard to find the hidden the phantom brands was from Niigata I think that was Koshino Kanbai was one of the very first ones that really got the attention of consumers in Tokyo which then sort of led to all kinds of shifts in the market so i have a big gap though between you know like that start and how it got to that point that um i don't know how to fill in any ideas any what what what came between you know sort of that that meiji birth of of a new blossoming flower garden flower bed of sake breweries and the uh the the sort of the the small powerhouse that higata later became well basically the short answer is sheer determination so as a prefecture and this is really why the story of it appeals to me i i love seeing prefectures that that really make an effort to develop their sake industry and see them reap the rewards of that and it's hard to argue that anyone's done it better than Niigata if you look at the history so going back to I think it's the 1930s now I'm never going to get all the names right because there's so many of these organizations but they're from the 1930s when the first one appears there's now about four or five of them these different organizations that handle different aspects of the brewing industry whether it be promotion education a combination of the two people that work with the the farmers to develop new strains.

14:51Like I said, I can't keep up with them. There's about four or five of them. But basically, you start getting these research centres. Now, the Niigata prefecture, one of their big claims is they have the only one in the country which is dedicated to purely concentrating on sake development and this they encompass all aspects of it and they start to work with their brewers as well because obviously you a big important part of this is the the niigata brewers themselves the niigata brewers themselves are very numerous the the echigo toji are one of the big ones when we've we've talked about toji associations many times on this podcast you think of the the nambu toji up in iwate or you think of the um the tamba toji in hyogo well one of the big players is the echigo toji and they flourish during the the meiji period from being quite quite a small organization in the edo period then they start spreading out not just throughout in Niigata, but throughout Japan during the Meiji period.

16:08And they start numbering into the thousands. So you've got a very strong brewers association spreading out throughout the country with their own distinct style. And you've got these research institutes. And you've also got a lot of development going on to not just better sake rice, but rice in general. but of course there is a lot of development going into sake rice as well and obviously another strong thing which to pick up on your your point you just made there a minute ago which is really the net effect of all this is you start to get a very strong regional identity and i guess the biggest the most recognizable aspect of that is tanrei karakuji so this is something that any podcast about niigata sake has to include it's one of the the central components to niigata's style yeah this this tanrei karakuji thing became sort of the catch word and and you know i think the idea of it sort of contrasting with an older style, I think probably if we wanted to talk about the older style the big symbol would probably be something like Kenbishi of a much sort of punchier, maybe heavier kind of sake compared to you know the Tane Karakuchi thing does get translated as kind of light and clean or light and crisp flavors but i mean to be sort of perfectly technically honest about it um the sort of that character that you get with niigata sake is not it's not very extreme like i guess it's it's lighter and cleaner than sort of the really old-fashioned and heavier western styles but um you know compared to something like you get in oh nagano or kochi it's it's actually got quite a lot of flavor, a lot of heft, a lot of sort of these different sort of complex flavors going on.

18:25But yeah, it was a comparative difference. Like it wasn't as super sweet as some of the older Western sakes. Even today, some of the stuff like you get in Kyushu is really, really quite sweet. So it was less sweet than that, lighter than that. And I think it was something different for consumers that were suddenly sort of thinking about what they were drinking more than just a way to get some relaxation after a hard days of work. And we've talked about the big social and economic changes of post-war Japan that led to a major sort of boom in sake brewing and consumption and how that eventually translated into more of a sophisticated market where people were hunting out higher quality goods.

19:19And Niigata became one of the first sources of those higher quality goods because it was doing something very different. And it had been working very hard to develop that difference, that unique character, which in a sense, I think, like Andy, you said at the beginning of the podcast, it's maybe not something that's particularly appealing to me. You know, just that sort of concerted effort of, we're all going to try to create a new identity, a new way of sort of marketing ourselves, as opposed to sort of the more organic, natural development from, based on tradition or local cuisine or things like that but yeah it obviously succeeded because you know in that sort of late 80s period i guess uh late 80s into the 90s probably a bit earlier i think i think the jizaki boom it is koshino kambai koshino kambai was the widely regarded as the beginning And apparently it was a journalist who wrote an article in the Asahi Shimbun maybe or something, 1972, and mentioned the sake from Niigata.

20:45And it might have even been in that article. I tried to find it online, couldn't find it anywhere. But it might even have been then that it mentioned for the first time Tanrei Karakuchi, I'm not sure. But that put Koshinokanbai on the map And then from there it starts to, I guess, give Niigata a platform Of course the Jizaki boom that follows lasts about 20 years And it really changes during that time as well It's very misunderstood, the Jizaki boom It starts off in Niigata but it ends up in places like Ehime and things and it becomes completely different from just Tanrei Karakuchi. There's brands on there that make completely different sake and things.

21:37So to talk about it as a single entity is very difficult to do, but for sure, Koshinokanbai is the beginning of it and Niigata is the, I guess, ground zero for the whole thing that eventually grows arms and legs and lasts almost two decades. yeah you know i think some of the interesting things that came out of that were you know obviously koshikonokanbe became it went from being sort of this almost impossible to find mystical sake label to being absolutely ubiquitous um and then i think that that kind of momentum carried on and and some other brands were able to also leverage that that early kind of rarity into long-lasting popularity.

22:29Kubota is obviously a sake that is now very universally available around Japan. And then you've got something like Hakkaisang, which, I mean, it's international now, right? Hakkaisang is a global brand. You can even buy the Los Angeles one in the local supermarket up the road from where I am. Oh, really? Okay. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, all those brands you just mentioned there are absolutely. I mean, I can buy Kubota, almost all of the main varieties, even the Nama ones to the Hire ones to the Daiginjo ones, the Jumai ones, they're all next door in my local supermarket. another supermarket has the as i said has the the los angeles hakai san but you don't really need to go that far for hakai san because it's available in every convenience store and koshino kambai you don't actually see it that often in konbini anymore but for sure it's in the supermarket yeah these are these are now some of the biggest brands and but maybe we're we're getting ahead of the game so let's wind this back a bit and talk about Tanrei Karakuchi and what it what it actually means then like why did Niigata brewers or how did they come upon this style right okay so all right what is Tanrei Karakuchi then Andy I mean there there there are some technical sort of some technical points behind it some reasons that that it is what it is so can you can you clarify because i'm not sure i really understand there's a lot of chemistry and things in there that that goes over my head it's it's actually quite simple and it's actually quite obvious why niigata would use this style for developing this regional identity that they've done so well to to promote out into into Japan and the rest of the world.

24:38Like I said at the beginning, these regions, particularly in the Tokoku area and Chubu or Hokuriku, depending on where you want to place Niigata, it seems to get placed in both of these regions from time to time. But these were underdeveloped regions in terms of technology. All the regions with high technology were all in Kansai. So this is the NADA brewers with their Kimoto and their hard water. And the other regions don't have this. They've got soft water. And of course, Hiroshima gives the nation a blueprint for improvements. And what's going on as that's happening is Japan is waking up to the fact that they can make a lot of tax from the sake industry if they support it.

25:37So like I said, you've got things like Sokujo being introduced, you've got cultured yeasts being introduced. And obviously, one of the big things that they're trying to deal with is soft water. Now, Niigata has predominantly soft water. There's apparently nowhere that would get to the same level of hardness as you would in say nada or some of these outlining regions it's got relatively hard water as well so at a time when the brewing technology is admittedly underdeveloped they're struggling but now they've got a new way of dealing with this so it's soft water brewing and as we know what goes best with soft water brewing is slow and low fermentation, a very subdued fermentation, leading to a light, clean sake, aka Hanrei Karakuchi.

26:31So the method they've chosen is exactly what's suited to the conditions that they have in Niigata. What you're going to get in the promotional material is obviously all about snow melt and all this kind of thing. And I guess it's true. I mean, they have a lot of snow and they get a lot of snow melt and that feeds into their very short, these very short rivers that then fuel these sake breweries. So that's why they have soft water. But what I just told you there is what you do to deal with that soft water. And I think now when you when you taste the sake, exactly what you just said, they are very light and they are very clean.

27:18compared to what we normally drink. But there are other regions that do that kind of style, maybe even more so. I'm thinking places like Cochi. There's other regions that aren't coming to the top of my head, but they're not alone in that sort of style. But they put a label on it. The Tanrei part, it's almost poetic. it's it's not a word that you really hear in in everyday japanese and then the rest of it is just dry so that really is the meaning behind tamri karakuchi but they were the first ones to to really put it out and they really caught a moment with consumers where there was a lot going on in the industry and if you'd asked me five years ago what would have been the the real reason for the jizaki boom which was niigata's big moment and the the thing that really launch padded them into the conscious of japanese sake drinkers i would have said it was probably the okiuri scandal but i don't believe that anymore i think that was part of it but i think really and like i said i've been really deep into this recently and i found some fascinating old books that I bought online as well.

28:40But I think a big part of this is really been frustration with the Kube Tuseido. That's the thing that really sparked the Jizaki boom part is that the Kube Tuseido was kind of hiding different styles of sake. So people had no idea what would, these were all emerging names at the time, but people had no idea what Ginjo was or what was Honjozo or what was Junmai. And it was kind of making a mockery of the system. It was all just Tokyu and, you know, first, second and third class. And of course, as we know, breweries were starting to get fed up with it as well. And they were stopping submitting their sake for appraisal so that they could get cheaper tax for their customers and look after their customers and things.

29:36So there was a lot of upheaval going on in the industry. And out of this, like I said, a journalist in probably in an office in Tokyo got hold of a bottle of Koshino Kanbai and wrote about it and it exploded. So, yeah, I guess I'm curious. So I'm not certainly curious. I'm thinking about that idea of sort of the style kind of predicted Ginjo. I mean, so we talk about Koshino Kanbei being really influential in the jizake boom. But I mean, I think it's almost impossible to divide the ginjo boom and the jizake boom because of that, because of the way that, like you said, the old system was hiding all of these more sophisticated ways of making sake, higher quality sake that existed outside of the mainstream.

30:43Yeah, the Ginjo thing though is interesting Because I always wonder what people's image is of the Jizaki boom People that are listening to this at home try googling this It's quite interesting If you google what were like the big sakes Or the big style of sake during the Jizaki boom It comes up with Ginjo and Junmai And that is categorically false because the big sake style during the early part of the Jizaki boom, this is the formative part, the part we're talking about with Niigata, it's nearly all Honjozo. So the Jizaki boom is launched on Honjozo, but it wouldn't be Honjozo as we know it today because Honjozo at that time, like Junmai and like Ginjo, was completely undefined.

31:37It was unregulated. They were not legal standards. These were just things that people were starting to flirt with, putting on the label and things. To me, another, I mentioned that the Okuyuri scandal was a thing. People were getting fed up with the QBetsu Sedo. People are getting really fed up with sake that has been thrice yielded with brewer's alcohol. And so there was a pushback on that. So Honjozo back then, it wouldn't have necessarily meant sake with less than 10 % brewer's alcohol. In fact, a lot of them had more than that and were labeled as Honjozo. But it's only when the Tokuteme Shoshu comes in, which is what, 89, that that becomes codified into tax law, that you cannot call it Honjozo or Futsushu.

32:33that really the the tanri karakuchi part of that for me it might not be nowadays but part of the original definition for me when we're talking about brewing so we're talking about soft water we're talking about low and slow fermentation and we're really talking about sokujo as well but we're also talking about Arutene. I guess it all falls under that kind of, that sort of quality discussion of, you know, these smaller breweries being much more careful about what they were doing and making sure that they maintained certain standards rather than just making sure that they maintained a certain level of production like we were getting out of the really major breweries under that system.

33:24but yeah i mean you know it's easy to find people complaining about the quality of of the san zoushu the the triple yield sake and and even beyond that the uh the the what is it the goldfish sake right the uh it was mostly water and yeah i mean you know consumers like i said they were getting more sophisticated and they weren't happy with the same old, same old, which I think is probably the way all of these, like, I don't want to call them fads, but the booms worked. And then, so we have this new sort of movement where, you know, people were looking for a different kind of flavor that Niigata was bringing.

34:17and uh yeah i mean i i will say like like i mentioned you know you mentioned it as well the action actual fact like you know the sake that comes out of niigata is not particularly um uh extreme in any one direction it's it's it's it's relatively i think middle of the road If you really, really, really want something that I think literally matches the definition of light and dry, get some futsushu from Nagano. I think it's like the old joke of, you know, Budweiser is like having sex in a canoe. It's blanking close to water. very very very very little sort of flavor left it's all just sort of alcohol and and a bit of rice aroma so yeah i mean i hope that doesn't get as explicit content jim i i beeped myself you can you can edit it out if you want but uh yeah yeah so you know i i think you know kochi is another one that has this very very very pulled back on on the richness that you get with a lot of other sake so there are scientific reasons for that the amount of uh sake the amount of rice extract that gets left in the final brew and and sort of the the degree to which um like a lot of the more complex flavors remain in a fast fermentation versus like andy said the low and slow fermentation i i wonder sometimes about uh the kasu leftover right the kasubuai is a ratio of how much sake or how much rice gets dissolved into the sake and how much ends up being tossed out as sake kasu um so a brewery like uh kenbishi will have a very very low amount of sake kasu compared to someone like oh i don't know dasai right because much much much more of the rice goes into the sake than uh in some of the more i guess you'd say refined slower ferments yeah Oh, it's incredible.

36:47The difference is striking. I mean, really, what you're talking there is two completely different brewing outlooks. Ginjo, I guess you could call it ginjo, I suppose, but you could also call it low and slow and what have you. But basically the objective is not to dissolve the rice, whereas with Kenbishi, they're trying to dissolve as much of the rice into the sake as possible. And how that manifests is in the Kasubuai, like you just said. So the brewery I worked, we sometimes had Kasubuai as low as 9%, typically maybe 10 to 11 was high for us. whereas I've worked for ginjo breweries before and the kasubuai can sometimes be as high as 45 so that that's a big factor when you're brewing with an expensive thing like rice but also quite weird when you start to think about it that we celebrate rice as being this big thing this this the central thing to to what sake is and some brewers are not trying to dissolve it into the sake they're trying to to to maintain it so that it comes out the other end as casserole but hey that's the story for another day yeah i i think i've been to a couple of breweries that that got higher than 50 seems somewhat, yeah, counterintuitive for me at least.

38:28Yeah. Some of the ponder kids when you're drinking. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, Niigata was doing this, it's its own thing. And that thing caught the attention of the market and the market responded. I mean, I think that's really all you can say. And Niigata remains an out-of-the-way place. It is not the kind of place that most people travel to, Japanese or non-Japanese alike. Like, you know, Andy mentioned this idea of these outlying areas being kind of underserved, underrepresented, underappreciated. And I think Niigata is in many ways still that. Like, it does have a reputation for things like high-quality rice and high-quality sake.

39:19But it's also not like the kind of major hub that you see, obviously, from Tokyo further west and into the Kansai area or even Kyushu. So, yeah, I suppose in that sense, it's a good thing that their sake has become so popular because it means that an otherwise probably completely ignored place gets attention and, you know, hopefully a bit of economic reward by becoming the sort of a seat of international sake brewing fame. So Hmm It's an interesting place Have you been to Niigata? I've not but I mean we've been talking about all the efforts The prefecture makes To Promote and maintain This very strong sake industry That they have and you really have to take your hat off To them but they do other things To entice people to come as well And drink sake and one of them Has to be sake no gin that is definitely on my on my radar although it seems to be so popular it seems to be quite difficult to get a ticket nowadays there's all sort of lotteries and days that the tickets go on sale and these are not things that get me excited and i don't know i think you're probably the same if if yeah no if i'm going to go to an event i want to click a button or go to a shop and say there's some money can i have a ticket please i don't want to be spending all night clicking on something and logging on at weird times in the morning and stuff but that that is the the popularity of sake no jin so uh yes i i would love to to get up there so if anyone's listening wants to give me some tickets then uh then i'm sure me and jim will be straight on that shinkansen the uh from from wherever it was it the joetsu shinkansen yeah well yeah yeah i'd also like to go to what is it what is it the ponchu kong is that the the place with the vending machine wall of sake vending machines yes yeah yeah i mean there's there's a lot of reasons to to go up there anyway i think we've we've got ahead of ourselves once again so let's try and let's try and get back on track so so what else do we need to know about niigata we have to talk about rice surely sure so everyone yeah i was gonna say so everyone knows um but it's quite an interesting rice so i guess we've been leading up to this there really does seem to have been a niigata boom a period where the whole country was really seemingly obsessed with their sake and their rice as well because obviously they have one of the most famous table rices as well but we're not going to talk about that but they did have the number one or most cultivated sake rice for a very short period of time which was Gohyaku Mangoku up until it was dethroned by Yamada Nishiki but it's still the number two rice in japan i mean it's it's everywhere goho yakuman goku seems to be all over the place and other prefectures grow it they grow it in kyoto where i am we use it actually but it does seem to be in a lot of different types of sake so i think it is still the number two but it's it's a kind of i gotta be honest i've i've never thought i've never been like oh yes this the listing gohyaku mangoku on the label makes me want to try that sake um i think i am indifferent at best when it comes to that particular rice um like i i can't say for sure that it has that kind of flavor that I recognize but there is an association in my head with a kind of I almost want to call it flatness I don't know I don't want to I don't want to come across as negative but it yeah it's it's not a rice that I really seek out yeah I I tend to agree with you In some people's hands, I think it can be absolutely magical.

44:08I had what could only be described as a Tamagawa fest one night in Kyoto and drank through most of their lineup. And the one that really stood out was the Gohyaku Mangoku. But you're right. Gohyaku Mangoku is known as very light, very clean producing rice. It doesn't give big, powerful, billowing flavours like Yamada Nishiki or more nuanced, terrible notes like Omachi. There's none of that. So the reason it's so widely used, though, is up to a certain point of rice polishing, it is quite easy to work with. It's quite predictable. it's a very large grain rice larger than Yamada Nishiki actually with a bigger shimpaku as well but where it falls down I guess it's Achilles heel and why Yamada Nishiki took over it is if you look at when Gohyaku Mangoku it appears 1957 and then it has its peak period where it's the number one top dog sake rice in Japan but of course what's happening is the ginjo boom so ginjo is starting to appear people are starting to get used to polishing heavier and then of course two or three decades later we're in the midst of the ginjo boom and then we develop the to the insanity period where we're polishing down to two percent and one percent and things and gohyaku mangoku is not suitable for that whereas Yamada Nishiki is Gohyaku Mangoku's big Shinpaku means that it breaks it's also very difficult to when you've highly polished it to do any kind of work with it in terms of washing and soaking and things which is why Gohyaku Mangoku's comfort zone really is in that original Tanrei Karakuchi about 60 % polished Honjozo range and I think the ones that I do like they all tend to be of that same kind of ilk they're your light crisp, clean dry Honjozos that are typically, even though they're Honjozo they're sitting around 60 % because actually one of the distinguishing features about Niigata is they have a very high level of rice polishing percentage on average compared to the rest of Japan.

46:57It's about 60%. It might even be slightly less than that. So that's coming from that sweet spot of Gohyaku Mangoku. So maybe for me it's this case where I typically only get in sort of Gohyaku Mangoku in the Ginjo range of 55 to 50 so I kind of maybe avoid that sweet spot I'm not sure, interesting I mean it's not uncommon to see Honjozo's at 55 % from Niigata as well let's not forget I think Hakai-san is about 55 % that's their standard Honjozo so yeah it is a defining feature of Niigata sake they typically have a higher polishing ratio than maybe even the category determines. All right. So I think that probably wraps it up for Niigata so far.

48:00You know, it's an interesting case study and focus and determination and creating sort of the ability to take advantage of opportunity when it strikes, which it certainly did back in the 70s. leading to something amazing so uh time i think for the the highlight are our recommendations and you know like we said 89 breweries and andy and i don't have a ton of experience with them but there's a lot to choose from so what what is your recommendation for niigata sake okay so we talked about koshino kanbai but there were actually three that became really famous during the the jizaki boom i feel like at this point we just call it the niigata boom but they were called the koshi no sanbai so the by part means plum and these were three brands that all featured the plum in their in their title in their brand name so koshi no kanbai but the one that i'm going to recommend is Seichu Bai and I think it's probably one of the most beautiful names when you translate it it means plumbing the snow I just I don't know what it is it just sounds very poetic it's got a beautiful label it's one of the brands that I'd always wanted to try and I've never been able to find it unlike Koshino Kanbei it's not readily available in Japan but these were three brands that were almost impossible to buy at face value during the Jizaki boom.

49:42These were the Dasais of their time, which is now the, obviously the Ju Yondai or whatever, Aramasa, just couldn't get them for loving their money unless you paid three, four times the price of the regular asking price. But said to buy, they do modern labels now as well. but the original one is actually now a futsu shoe but it's it's fantastic if you want to know what really was being driving consumers wild during the jizaki boom then that's it they only sell it i believe in ishobin um it's in a big uh big brown bottle which deemed i guess the cheapest cheapest bottle colour it's got a beautiful old traditional label, I think it's even got additives, it says it on the label so you don't really know what's in the sake other than rice koji and some other stuff so it is a proper futsushu but it's Tanri Karakuchi personified so if you can find it, go out, try it that's what people were going wild for in the 1970s.

51:00And that's my recommendation. It's great. I hadn't even heard of it until you mentioned it. So there you go. My recommendation is going to be the other one. I'm going to recommend Koshino Kanbai, but very particularly, I'm going to recommend the Futsushu, the Josen. For much the same reason that Andy recommended his, because I think that's it. Like that was the sort of the core of what Niigata Sake was bringing. And, you know, obviously, Koshino Kanbei now has just an incredibly huge array of sake. I actually have tried it all. I did some work for Koshino Kanbei and they very graciously sent me two cases of sake, a bottle of everything they make, including some of the really crazy stuff.

52:01So, you know, a lot of it, I think, has just become really, really modern in many of the ways that, you know, most sake has, very aromatic, lots of, you know, very clean ginjo, dainginjo flavor. But that futsushu, particularly when you drink it as kanzake, it's really fun stuff. You know, it's got character and it's got some heft to it that remains, even though back in the day it was still much lighter than what most people were used to. So today, Andy and I both chose a futsushu from Niigata, which is probably as on brand as it gets for us. So, you know, not a lot of kimoto up there. So that's the way it goes.

52:59So, yes, that brings us to the end of another Sake Deep Dive. Thank you so much for listening. Once again, I want to mention our Patreon is still up, www.patreon.com slash sake deep dive. That's all one word. And as we mentioned last time, we're going to be trying something new for our patrons on Patreon. one episode a month is going to be for patrons only so you know just a sort of a bigger thank you for all of the support that our patrons have been giving and continue to give very very much appreciated so as always I have been your host Jim Ryan you can find me on my website www.jimryan.com but you're not going to see a lot of sake content up there lately.