Exploring the Rise of Sake - And Where to Drink it in London

One of my favourite meals of this year so far was at La Pyramide, the two Michelin-starred restaurant in Vienne, France. The place has an amazing history (it was among the first-ever three- star restaurants, back in 1933), and the food is wonderful, but the biggest surprise of  the evening wasn’t the artfully blended ingredients or superb wines but the partner to a dish of crab with lovage, celery and caviar: a tiny white cupful of sake. This wasn’t the pairing: that was in my wine glass. It was an extra flavour — a slug of savoury, delicately spicy liquid that complemented the marine freshness of the crab. And it really worked.

When sake is showing up on France’s finest tables, you know it’s time to pay attention. Several of London’s top hotels have recently installed Japanese fine dining restaurants — there is Endo Kazutoshi’s Kioku restaurant at Raffles London at the OWO, Shinji Kanesaka at 45 Park Lane (part of the Dorchester) and Miho Sato, the UK’s only female sushi master, performing marvels at The Aubrey in the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park. However, that is less surprising than the enthusiasm among sommeliers at some of London’s most interesting non-Japanese eating places — Honey Spencer at Sune and Isa Bal at Trivet — for matching sake to all sorts of unlikely dishes. They have realised how well its savoury note — the one the Japanese call umami — works with cheese, and what a soothing balance the creamier styles make to a salty dish. Once you realise that sake can work with fettucine and venison, as I did at Arva, Aman Hotel’s Italian-Japanese fusion restaurant, high above Tokyo, you understand that the sky’s the limit when it comes to creative sake pairings.

Sake can be served hot or cold, still or sparkling (yes, that’s a thing); it is sometimes textured, often perfumed, usually moreish. While in Japan, I tried as many sakes as I could, in several prefectures, and made with different types of rice. Until recently, Yamada Nishiki, from Hyogo Prefecture, was held as the finest variety for sake everywhere, but these days there’s a move to go local, just as there is in the wine world, with indigenous grape varieties. 

In Hyogo Prefecture, to understand how sake is made and what makes one style different from another, I visited Akashi, a former fishing village near Kobe on the south coast, that is now a city boasting the world’s second-longest suspension bridge. At the Akashi-Tai Brewery, where sake has been made for four generations by the same family, I donned a very unattractive hairnet and ventured into the production area. The challenge for a sake brewer is that rice has  no natural sugars, and without sugar, there’s no fermentation. The solution is a benign rice mould called koji (also used to make soy sauce and miso), which breaks down the starches so that there is something for the yeast to turn into alcohol.

Before the rice goes into the brewery, however, the husk must be sanded away. The more the rice is polished, the fewer proteins and fats remain, so the flavours are more refined — and of course, the more the grain is whittled down, the more expensive the final product becomes. A polishing ratio of 60 per cent (throwing away 40 per cent) is known as Ginjo; to be a Daiginjo, the polishing ratio must be at least 50 per cent. If the Junmai designation is also used, no alcohol has been added. So a Junmai Daiginjo is an especially premium sake, like a Grand Cru wine. The rice is steamed in a contraption larger than me, then manually separated to cool the grains (I helped; it was extremely soothing). Once koji, yeast and water are added to the steamed rice, fermentation can begin. Sake, says confessed “sake nut” Aidan Monk of Humble Chicken restaurant in London’s Soho, is a flavour enabler: “it will transform a bite or enhance a dish that you didn’t think could get any better.” The restaurant, which has two Michelin stars, usually has around 35 sakes available and pairs a full sake “journey” with its tasting menu.

“We always have three to five sakes on rotation at Sune,” says Honey Spencer. She likes the liveliness of a classic Daiginjo or Junmai Daiginjo with oysters and other fresh seafood, and a Nigori — unfiltered, the natural wine of sake — with cooked fish and meatier dishes. At the moment, she is particularly taken with the tropical fruit notes of Kanpai Nigori “Kumo”. And, she points out, you can take sake right through the meal. Sparkling sake makes an unusual aperitif (I am waiting, impatiently, for Akashi-Tai’s superb vintage version to make it overseas, although the non-vintage, which is already here, is also very good) and, says Honey, “we’ve had great success with Umeshus [Japanese liqueurs that involve steeping plums in sake] with the right desserts.”

There are so many possibilities to play with: not just flavour, texture or rice variety, but temperature. I asked Natsuki Kikuya, a London-based sake educator who also imports smaller, more interesting breweries under the Museum of Sake label, what she thinks of hot sake. “In the UK, it was assumed to be a lower grade or a winter gimmick, but in Japan, there’s a move towards premium hot sake, and there are interesting ways to use temperature difference in a sake pairing,” she says.

Then there is very cold sake. Natsuki is excited about “phantom brewing”, where small traditional breweries collaborate with entrepreneurs who can help create interest abroad. She cites Toku Saké, a partnership between brewery Takasago Shuzo in Hokkaido, entrepreneur Anthony Newman and a certain Cate Blanchett (yes, that Cate Blanchett), who has signed up as Creative Director. Hokkaido is the coldest province, which enables Toku Saké to take the ancient tradition of waiting until the weather cools to ferment their rice — important, in the days before cold refrigeration, for preserving flavours and aromas — and give it a smart modern spin. Their Junmai Daiginjo, an alluring blend of creamy and lemony notes,  is certainly headily aromatic. But let’s return to the French.

Régis Camus, the palate formerly responsible for PiperHeidsieck and Rare Champagne, is working with Urakasumi and Niizawa breweries in Miyagi Prefecture to produce sakes under  the label Heavensake, while Richard Geoffroy, for many years the man in charge of Dom Pérignon, now produces a superb sake called IWA, in Toyama, about 300 miles north-west of Tokyo. If sake is capturing the heart and palate of France’s gourmets, it’s probably time for those of us who love crab dishes and Champagne to start paying attention.

THREE GREAT PLACES TO DRINK SAKE IN LONDON

Kioku Bar

An offshoot of the fine-dining Japanese restaurant upstairs, Kioku Bar at Raffles London at the OWO has a record player,  plush seating and, in Anthony Yukio, a  truly inspiring sake sommelier. The list is eclectically organised; so, when I asked him what his current favourite was, he picked a sake from the bar’s “Bubbles and Clouds” section. “Nichi Nichi Akitsu Yamadanishiki  is a light, modern-style sake, all layered elegance, jasmine and white peaches,” he  said, adding that this bottling is just 12% ABV — useful, for a dangerously moreish sake.

kiokubyendo.com/bar

Kanpai

London’s own sake brewery (and the maker  of the Nigori Honey Spencer serves at Sune), Kanpai in Bermondsey is the baby of Tom and Lucy Wilson, who went to Japan and returned as converts. They have a taproom and a selection of dishes prepared by chef Tai Nguyen, formerly of Bone Daddies. In short, this is a proper izakaya — sake and snacks in a chilled-out environment — and proximity to the source means this is the freshest sake on offer to a Londoner who hasn’t boarded a 14-hour flight.

kanpai.london

Roketsu

Opened in 2022, this 10-seat establishment  in Fitzrovia bills itself as London’s first kaiseki restaurant (kaiseki is a series of intricate, seasonally oriented dishes). Chef Daisuke Hayashi trained at Kyoto’s three-Michelinstarred Kikunoi and his food is exquisite, with the sakes to match. There is an à la carte lunch menu and, even better, there is Bo-Sen, a small bar area downstairs, where those not up for  a multi-course dinner can sip sake, wine, cocktails… or cocktails made with sake.

roketsu.co.uk