All About Saké (and a little about wine)

How Saké Is Made

Saké is a rice wine. Rice grains have a dense packet of starch in the very center, while the rest contributes very little to the flavor or quality of the saké. Therefore, before the saké is even brewed, the rice that will be used for it is milled so that only the starch packet in the center remains. The more of the grain which is milled away, the higher quality the saké. Some saké brands may even indicate the milling percentage on the bottle; this is the percentage of the original rice grain that was milled away. 60 % is considered high quality saké, though some brands can go even as high as 75 %. At that point, only a fourth of the original rice grain remains!

Though typically known or thought of as a wine, saké is brewed, much like how beer is prepared.

Pronunciation

Pronouncing the name is quite easy. "SAW-KEY"

Some other odd sounding wine names that can prove hard to pronounce:

Pinot Grigio - "PEE-no GREE-zo" (or GREE-joe)
Pinot Gris - "PEE-no GREE"
Pinot Noir - "PEE-no NWAH-r"

ends in "Blanc" - BLONK (the 'a' makes the same sound as 'a' in father)

Sauvignon - SAW-VEE-NYON

(as in Cabernet Sauvignon, a red wine, or Sauvignon Blanc, a white wine)

How To Serve Wine

Wines taste best at certain temperatures, depending on the color and type of wine. It is often surprising how much difference a few degrees in temperature can make. This is something you must experience for yourself before you really understand and start to realize how true it is.

As a general rule, the redder and/or darker the wine, the warmer it should be served. The converse is also true; the lighter the wine, the colder it should be served. Carbonated wines of any type should be served well-chilled simply due to the fact that warmer drinks go flat faster (the gas trapped as carbonation escapes more easily from warm liquid).

For red wines in particular, letting them breathe (or pouring from an aerator nozzle) also helps release the flavor better. In a non-formal setting, some people prefer to suck air while tilting the head slightly forward, yet another way to aerate your wine. You can also swirl the wine around in the glass.

Here is a chart showing the five basic wine types, and how to best store, prepare, and serve each one. There will always be exceptions, so knowing your wine helps a lot. This chart should help for the average consumer who doesn't have a special wine refrigerator that can be set to certain temperatures. Most charts only show temperature, which the average consumer would have no simple way to test or store their wines at.

Wine Color/Type	Store	Prepare	Serve
White/Champagne/Saké	Chilled	Serve immediately	Chilled
Pink	Chilled	Let warm slightly	Mostly chilled
Red	Room temperature	Chill slightly, aerate or let sit out	Slightly chilled
Dark red	Room temperature	Aerate or let sit out	Room temperature

Note that after opening a bottle, if you don't drink the entire contents and plan to store the rest for later, it should be chilled from that point on, regardless of its type. However, this doesn't change its ideal serving temperature. That means for red wines, you must now leave the wine out of the refrigerator quite a while before it can be served at the proper temperature.

Serving Glasses/Cups

The type of glass can also have a great effect on the experience of drinking wine of any type, including saké. Here is a chart showing the type of wine, what type of glass to serve it in, and why.

Wine Color/Type	Serving Glass/Cup	Reason
Saké	Very small saké cup Masu (small wooden box)	Traditional Chilled saké is typically served in tiny cups, while warm saké is served in a box (masu)
White/Pink	Small or medium glass	Smaller glass absorbs less heat from hands and keeps drink cooler longer (holding the glass by pinching the stem with two fingers helps as well)
Champagne/Sparkling	Flute-shaped glass	Helps it to remain carbonated longer (less surface area exposed to air)
Red/Dark red	Large, bowl-shaped glass	Helps the wine to breathe and aerate Allows pouring a full serving of wine while filling the glass less than halfway, which makes for easier swirling/aeration

How To Serve Saké - Warm or Cold?

Like white wine, saké is best when served chilled. However, saké is one of the few alcoholic drinks that can also be served warm (not room temperature but warm like hot cocoa). Chilling a drink generally improves flavor and enhances taste, while heating can hide imperfections (and also flavors). Basically, if you've tried saké warm and enjoy it that way, there's nothing wrong with it. However, beware of using up good, high quality saké this way without getting to enjoy the full complexity of its true flavors. In general, cheap saké tends to be better for serving warm, and medium to high quality saké is best served chilled.

A Matter of Taste

Taste is one of the most interesting sensations, because there are so many different flavors and possibilities, which seem to stem from just four basic building blocks: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. I find it amazing that such variety is possible simply with these four flavors in different amounts.

One common misconception about the tongue is that each flavor sensation is limited to a certain part of the tongue. To the contrary, the myth seems to have sprung up since the sensations are typically more powerful in those areas. Either the tongue sensors in those areas are more developed/sensitive, or there are simply more of them.

A great example of the complexity of flavor is champagne. While made mostly like wine, the primary difference is that many different wines are combined to make a more interesting flavor, and the yeast and and fermentation byproducts are removed, which makes the flavor sweeter. What is so fascinating about this is that there are teams of taste-testers dedicated to ensuring that the new batch of champagne has the exact same flavor as the old one. Why is this necessary? Each crop of grapes will naturally have ever-so-slight variances in flavor, and this is something only such world-class taste-testers would notice!

One pro tip for tasting anything liquid, particularly wine - smell it first with both your mouth and nose open. This imprints the scent and part of the taste (since smell is apparently 70% of the taste anyway) so that when you actually taste it, you get more out of it. In addition, while tasting it, swirl it around and savor it, rather than swallowing immediately. Keeping your nose open here helps as well. Most people tend to unconsciously close their nasal cavity when drinking - it's a reflex designed to prevent you from inhaling instead of imbibing. Just suppress the reflex long enough to get more out of the taste, but only before you swallow. When you swallow, this reflex is a very good thing!

I imagine these tips might also help for solid foods, but are probably not as effective, especially when it comes to drier foods like bread. Scent is transmitted via microscopic particles and/or vapors, and vapor is produced more readily by liquids, especially at higher temperatures. Higher temperature simply means more movement in the atoms and thus a greater chance of particles vaporizing.

Why then does a bakery smell so good, if dry foods don't produce as many particles? An increase in heat causes motion in the air. Heat wants to move and rise up, and this includes air from the oven. As the bread bakes, yeast in the bread produces gas, causing the dough to rise. Some of this gas will escape the bread, and since it is very hot, it will act just like any other hot gas and try to escape the oven, building up pressure if it cannot do so. When it does escape, wind will then carry this hot air, which then brings the smell of baking bread along with it.

Another fascinating mystery in the realm of taste is the compound known simply as miracle berry (literally, as the molecule causing the effect is known as miraculin). Apparently, it changes the flavor of oranges and other citrus fruits when eaten beforehand, making them sweet instead of sour. I've never tried it, but I imagine it would be quite interesting and stimulating. One also wonders at its effect on other foods!

Now, taste gets really interesting when you combine two flavors together, even if you are not experiencing them at the same time. The effect is much stronger in that case, however. For instance, if you take a bite of something, then after you've swallowed that, take a bite of something else, the taste from the first food is still imprinted in your memory. Some of the liquids or particles from that food may still be on your tongue, as well. Either way, upon tasting the second food, you experience both the flavor of the new food, the flavor of the first food, and most importantly, the difference between the flavors. This is what really makes things interesting, as you'll see more of in a minute.

In this case, you've experienced what I like to call a one-way flavor delta. Delta is the Greek character that looks like a triangle, and is used in mathematics to represent change or transition; more specifically, the amount of change. In this case, you have now tasted both flavors at the same time, though a lesser amount of one than the other. Due to this discrepancy (tasting less of the first flavor), this is only a one-way delta, meaning you experience the difference between the flavors in one direction. You taste more of the second flavor, so you can tell more about how that flavor differs from the first, but not vice versa. The first flavor is now all but gone, though for a brief moment both of the tastes were there. After a couple more bites of the second food, the first flavor is wiped out completely, and the taste of the second food becomes far less interesting.

Taste the foods in reverse, and you will understand why I call it a one-way flavor delta. The difference between food A and food B is not the same thing as the difference between food B and food A. You have to experience this personally to know what I'm talking about, but I'm certain that any good taste tester would agree with me here. The second flavor is always stronger (unless you try them both at once) and this creates a discrepancy in which your taste buds must tell you more about one flavor than they can about the other, causing this one-way difference.

When you have two different foods at the same time, that is when things get really magical. Not only are you now tasting flavor A and flavor B at the same time (in roughly equal amounts), but you are also tasting what I call a two-directional delta. You can now taste the complete difference between both flavors, and this is one of those cases where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. That's why a sandwich tastes so much better than just eating the individual things one at a time, even though the parts are all the same. The average sandwich has (I would estimate) about 10 different flavors in it, so this means you are actually tasting ten flavors as well as C(10,2) two-way flavor deltas! That's an incredible combination of 55 flavors and flavor deltas at once. I bet you never knew that 5 plus 5 on a sandwich equals 55! (Heh, actually if you write '5' on the crust of both pieces of bread and look at it sideways like the spine of a book, 5 plus 5 DOES equal 55!)

For those mathematically-inclined folks, C(n,k) is a combination of n items taken k at a time; in this case we have 10 distinct flavors taken 2 at a time, giving us 45 flavor delta combinations (plus the ten individual flavors themselves for a total of 55). A combination is very similar to a permutation, except order does not matter, similar to a hand of cards, but unlike a race where the racers finish in a certain order.