By Marc
Saké -- an alcoholic drink that originated in Japan -- has had a rather bad reputation in North America for many decades. In recent years, however, the drink has become much more popular because of a new appreciation of Japanese food and the availability of higher quality imported saké. Consumers are starting to realize how delicious a carefully crafted saké can be, or how it can serve as the base of tasty cocktails.
Although most of the world's saké is produced in Japan (home to almost 2,000 breweries), the western U.S. has breweries in Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Forest Grove (Oregon). The rice for the breweries is grown in the Sacramento Valley, an agricultural region to the north of Sacramento. And thus, the phrase "local saké" is a relative one: for most of North America, "local saké" means that it came across the continent instead of across the planet. But since Japanese saké probably enters North America on the West Coast, Japanese saké will be transported roughly the same number of miles within the U.S. as a California or Oregon saké. The avoided leg of the journey will be the dirtiest one: a month in a huge container ship with an dirty, old engine that burns one of the most polluting fuels around ("bunker fuel," a thick substance with hundreds of times more sulfur than diesel fuel used in trucks), concentrating its pollution on a just a few (generally low income) communities around the port.
Saké producers in California include Gekkeikan in Folsom (east of Sacramento), Ozeki Saké in Hollister (that surprisingly teen-trendy city 80 miles south of San Francisco in San Benito County), and Takara Saké in Berkeley. In Oregon, Saké One (Momokawa) is producing classically-styled saké and also flavored saké in an attempt to expand its market size. Among these producers, Momokawa and Takara are my favorites, especially Momokawa's Ruby and Takara's Sho Chiku Bai Ginjo.
Making Saké
The raw ingredients for saké are specially-bred sake rice, koji mold (Aspergillus oryzae), yeast, and water. The first step is to polish the rice to remove the outer shell, leaving only the pure starch core. Different grades of saké have different polishing levels, with the highest level (daiginjo) having more than 50% of the rice shell removed. After washing, the rice is steamed and cooled. Part of the rice is inoculated with the koji mold to break the rice's long starches into simple sugars. After a few days, this koji rice is combined with the untreated rice, yeast, and water for the fermentation process. Fermentation proceeds for a few weeks, during which time the koji continues to break long starches into simple sugars and the yeast converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide (the technical term for this is "parallel fermentation"). The saké is then filtered, pasteurized (except in the case of nama-zake) and diluted with pure water to obtain the appropriate alcohol level (usually 15%).
For more about the saké-making process and saké labeling, I recommend the detailed descriptions at John Gauntner's Saké World, True Saké (a store in San Francisco which sells only Japanese saké), SakéOne, eSaké, and the Saké Association of America. Numerous books are available on the subject, including one by owner of True Saké and the excellent beginner's book Saké Pure + Simple.
Berkeley Saké
If you drive along the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay, you've probably seen the big sign for Takara Saké's tasting room at the University exit on I-80 (or, if you are a Bay Trail bicyclist, you might see it as you ride across the bike/ped bridge). For years I had thought about going for a saké tasting, but it wasn't until a few months ago that I finally paid them a visit. Whereas wine tasting usually has a pastoral feel -- winding along curving country roads, a slow drive up a dirt road between rows of grape vines, a rough-hewn tasting room -- the Takara Saké facility feels industrial -- all steel, glass and concrete.
The tasting room itself is another world, however, with a floor of granite and glass (some of the glass is recycled from old beverage bottles) and warm wooden features (made from reclaimed lumber). A back room holds a small exhibit of old-style saké making equipment. Visitors can taste half of Takara's saké and other beverages for free, every day from 12 to 6.
Pros and Cons of American Rice
I have mixed feelings about California rice. Some, like Peter Singer and Jim Mason, argue that one should eat Asian rice because it is grown with far lower energy inputs than California rice (see, for example, this E magazine interview with Jim Mason). However, when considering saké rice, one must use highly industrialized Japan as the comparison, not less mechanized countries like Vietnam, Thailand or India.
American rice requires a lot of energy and fertilizer. The Rice Backgrounder from the USDA's Economic Research Service says this about American rice (note that the statistics are for all U.S. rice; the report does not provide statistics on California's energy and fertilizer inputs):
For 2005, costs for fuel, lubricants, and electricity for rice production are an estimated $110 per acre, compared with $38 for corn, $37 for cotton, $17 for wheat, and $14 for soybeans (p. 14)....rice has the highest per acre fertilizer expense among major field crops, estimated at $70 per acre in 2005, versus $56 for corn, $40 for cotton, $29 for wheat, and $10 for soybeans. (p. 15)
Rice is also heavily subsidized (again, these are U.S. averages):
Assuming a maximum countercyclical payment, per-base-acre payments (direct payments plus countercyclical payments) for rice under the 2002 Farm Act are calculated at $168, compared with $63 for corn, $35 for wheat, and $22 for soybeans. Only peanuts, at $178 per base acre, exceed the calculated level for rice (p. 32 of the Rice Backgrounder)
However, California has proven to be a suitable location to produce world-class short-grained rice, as well as long grain varieties like basmati. In addition, flooded rice fields provide wintertime habitat for numerous waterfowl and wading birds. If the lands weren't used for rice, they might be used for other crops which don't provide a watery habitat, like cotton or row crops.
These data highlight one of the recurring themes about eating: trade-offs are everywhere, and few decisions are simple. The first step to a more just and sustainable food system is for consumers to learn about the trade-offs, so that they can realize what is at stake with each food purchase.
Marc lives in Berkeley, California and writes Mental Masala, an enticing blend of food, history, travel, and nature.
Saké image is from Kankan's Flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.
