What It Means to be an Ambassador Connecting the World to the Charm of Sake (Part 1)
In Part I of this dialog between Mika Onishi, Representative Director of the Miss SAKE Association, and Kay (Kosuke) Kato, President and Investment Evangelist of WealthPark Lab, we hear about the wonder and appeal of sake, as well as the potential and issues that face sake industry globalization from a business perspective.
Mika Onishi, Representative Director, Miss SAKE Association, is a native of Tokyo who graduated from the Faculty of Law at Sophia University. When she moved to the U.S. in 2006, she began working to inform people about sake and became a certified sake instructor. While working with sake and shochu at The Winery, a wine shop in New York, she also obtained WSET and Master of Cheese qualifications. After returning to Japan in 2008, she worked as a sake and shochu instructor and as a producer of food-related events, and from 2009 also began working in sales planning for Hokusetsu Sake Brewery in Niigata Prefecture. In 2014, she became Representative Director of the Miss SAKE Association, and also worked in sake and rice production before assuming her current position in September 2021.
Kay (Kosuke) Kato, President and Investment Evangelist of WealthPark Lab conducts research and disseminates information to “open new investment doors for all.” He has been in his current position since 2021.
Click here for Kosuke Kato’s profile
Sake, a culture handed down through the ages that we want to preserve for future generations
Kato: I was really looking forward to speaking with you today, as you’ve been involved with the sake industry for many years. I’d love to rediscover the charm of sake, which is so near and dear to us Japanese. First, could you tell us how you got drawn to sake?
Onishi: I’ve been involved in the sake business for 15 years. Before my current job, I worked at a sake brewery on Sado Island in Niigata in the company president’s office. I got sake business experience in planning and sales aimed at both domestic and overseas markets, and in the winter, experience in actual sake brewing.
There are so many reasons attracting me to sake, but looking back now, I think it was my fascination with couple of mysterious miracles.
First, there’s the mystery and wide variety of sake “aromas.” Each one of the floral and fruity aromas produced by ginjo-shu in particular is unique and wonderful in ways that are hard to put in words. All I can do is marvel at how mere rice and water can produce such a wide variety of aromas. This miracle of aromas that you can’t artificially manufacture is one thing that really attracted me.
I was also captivated by the invisible symphony that the microbes in sake brewing play, namely the mechanism of multiple parallel double fermentation, where starch is broken down and alcohol is produced simultaneously — no other alcohol in the world is produced through such a complex and exquisite balance. Compared to beer, where the two processes are clearly separated, or wine, which requires only the latter one, this is an extremely delicate operation. I got more and more deeply interested in sake as I wondered, “Who discovered this process in ancient times and how did they do it in an age without advanced technology?” So, I sped off to the sake brewery to learn more about the actual process on site, and went on into a career in sake.
From olden times, savoring fermented foods like miso, soy sauce, and natto (fermented soybeans) has been part of Japanese food culture. I think that sake tops this list in terms of technology and culture and I’m very proud to be involved in a culture that’s been handed down to us from the past, and I want to pass it on to future generations.
Another reason I fell in love with sake is just simply that I like to eat and drink, and it’s a joy pairing many different kinds of sake with food.
The most important thing is to let drinkers choose what they find delicious, with a smile on their face
Kato: Thank you. From the very beginning, it was clear to me how much you love sake. I also like to eat, and I also like the presence of sake in the course of communicating with people. By the way, compared to beer or wine, I’ve had few chances to learn from someone how to pair sake with food or how to drink it. With beer, you toast with a refreshing lager and then move on to something a little heavier, maybe an ale or an IPA. And with wine, you can start with sparkling, and follow it with white or red, and so on. To make it easier for the layman to understand, could you introduce some basic pairings and a drinking order that you’d recommend for sake?
Onishi: It depends on the type of food, and I don’t think there’s one right answer, but I’d be happy to introduce my way of enjoying sake. For the first glass, I often enjoy a daiginjo (great choicest brew) or junmai daiginjo (great choicest pure rice brew) with a lovely aroma, just like toasting with champagne. For appetizers such as carpaccio and sashimi, I’ll have a junmai ginjo (choicest pure rice brew ) or ginjo (choicest brew) with a more subdued aroma and flavor than the one from the toast.
Then, as we get closer to the fish or meat or other main course, I switch to junmai (pure rice) sake. If there is a stew or other dish with a deep flavor, hot sake is also a very good option. Then, at the end of the meal, I’ll heat up a honjozo (genuine brew) to hot or sometimes even to a very hot temperature and enjoy sipping it. Is that too much drinking [laughs]?
Kato: Wow, you make me want to drink now and try that pairing course right away. From what you say, savoring the aroma seems to be one of the key points for pairing. First, enjoy the exceptional ginjo aroma, and then let it settle down a bit with the next glass. Then, the next cup of junmai complements the food, and changing the temperature increases the pleasure. Perhaps a honjozo isn’t as extravagant as a ginjo, but it is delicious and packs a lot of flavor, and I was thinking that would be a great way to enjoy finishing off the meal.
Onishi: I also love the taste of honjozo. What I really want to get across about enjoying sake is that each person’s sense of taste is really different. I’ve been to hundreds of sake-tasting and sales events at department stores, and even though everyone was drinking the exact same sake, one customer would say, “It’s dry and delicious, I can drink as much as I want,” and another would say, “This is sweet and velvety — I want to drink it slowly and by myself,” feeling the exact opposite impressions. It made me think about how different people’s tastes are. I learned that the most important thing is not for the brewer to push the flavors on the drinker, but for the drinkers to choose what they find delicious with a smile on their face. And that smile is what brings the greatest joy to the folks at the brewery. Of course, there are times when I do my sales pitch about the taste, but I think it is important to leave it up to the customer as opposed to the seller. So, please just take my way of drinking only as a reference, and create your own sake journey for your personal enjoyment.
I’ll never forget the excitement of drinking sake after going through pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding
Kato: I like the word “alternative,” and sake is basically an unmatchable work of art that can never be replicated because each brewery, year of production, tank, and bottle filled tastes different. Each one is a one-of-a-kind “work of art,” and I find this indescribably appealing.
And I think that one indicator of the maturity of a society is whether the people in it can accept and enjoy such alternative one-of-a-kind products — ones that aren’t mass-produced and ready-made. Earlier, you mentioned pairing sake with food, but on the other hand, there are differences in personal tastes, and your sense of taste itself changes with your physical condition, age, and your mood on a given day. I’d like to take on the question of how to enjoy alternative sake.
Onishi: Speaking of the sense of taste changing, I heard from a lot of people that your sense of taste changes at the time of pregnancy and childbirth. I’d thought that handling sake was my calling, but since I gave up alcohol for two years during my pregnancy and breastfeeding, I was extremely worried about what might happen to my life if my sense of taste and physical condition had really changed and I started to dislike sake.
For my first drink after giving birth, I chose a junmai daiginjo, my favorite sake from the brewery where I’d originally worked. I was really nervous, but after a sip, I truly felt that this sake that I was familiar with was indeed delicious, and I was certain that I could come back, keep working with sake, and truly make it my life’s work. But if my sense of taste had changed, I would have gone back to look for a new favorite sake [laughs].
Kato: Isn’t it really a blessing to know that you’ve found your true calling? And now you’re in a position to promote your beloved sake all over the world as representative of the Miss SAKE Association. I’m very interested in how you explain sake to people who’ve never had it before, especially foreigners who are unfamiliar with it.
Onishi: Well, for one thing, it’s relatively easy to explain sake to someone familiar with wine, because they already know the characteristics of the brew and how to describe flavors and aromas.
For example, you can explain a light, refreshing, acidic and easy-drinking type of sake by telling someone it’s akin to the grape variety Sauvignon Blanc, and be easily understood. If it’s a junmai (pure rice) sake with a slightly rich flavor and weight, you can say, “Think of it as a heavy Chardonnay with a touch of oaky flavor produced in a warm region of California.” Wine aficionados tend to both enjoy the taste and aroma and be very studious anyway, so when foreigners get interested in sake, they really get quite caught up in it.
We’re only at the “1st Station” of spreading sake among the world’s 8 billion people
Kato: Let’s talk about the global sake business. A lot of Japanese people aren’t good at languages and creating a mechanism for sales, that is, marketing. But with Japanese food becoming so popular around the world these days, sake has unlimited potential. I believe that the Miss SAKE Association is being run with the goal of making sake familiar to 8 billion people around the world, but if you were to compare sake’s overseas penetration to mountain climbing, which “Station” would you say you are at now?
Onishi: As you say, sake has amazing potential for global expansion. Many of our advisors are among the earliest sake exporters, and I believe that the government has finally begun to support this policy-wise, but we are still at the 1st Station. Miss SAKE has been supporting full-scale internationalization from the time of the Japan Pavilion at the 2015 Expo in Milan. Since then, we were making good progress over the next five years until the COVID-19 pandemic brought it all to a halt. However, I believe that the past experiences we’ve accumulated give us the ability to accelerate from here to the 3rd or 5th Station. We at Miss SAKE will help out in various ways, and I want to do all I can to raise the level of the industry as a whole by taking part in influential events abroad along with public institutions.
Kato: If you look around the world, you can see that the alcoholic beverage industry has been changing dramatically in the last few decades. First of all, in many countries, the consumption of the alcoholic beverages that had symbolized their countries, has gone down significantly. For example, per capita consumption of wine in France has halved over the past 30 years. Similarly, per capita consumption of beer in Germany has gone down 30%, and sake consumption in Japan is also half down over the past 20 years. In other words, the alcoholic beverage industry in each of these countries is experiencing such rapid changes that the industry itself could go under unless it promotes activities aimed at the global market.
Meanwhile, this is also a result of new beverages being imported from other countries under free trade, and the increased variety of ways that consumers enjoy drinking. Freedom and diversity of consumer choice is also a measure of a society’s maturity, so you could say that the world is steadily moving forward. However, it’s also extremely important to protect your own wonderful culture, whether it’s wine, beer, or sake. In order to pass sake on to the next generation, not as some historical craft, but as an industry, you need catalysts and ideas to access the world market of 8 billion people, which is hundreds of times larger than the limited population of a single country. This is where I feel that Miss SAKE’s activities will have high social value.
Onishi: Sake exports have been expanding year after year, and its unit price is also up significantly. About 10% of output is now bound for overseas markets, but we are still really in the initial phase. If it weren’t for the container bottleneck caused by the pandemic, I think both the export volume and value would have increased even more. Those of us in the industry feel that we’re only just getting started.
It’s important for the Japanese sake industry to take on the challenges of utilizing foreign capital and training skilled artisans
Kato: By the way, I think an important part of this is not only to export Japan-made sake, but also to establish sake breweries overseas in order to spread sake throughout the world. A lot of production sites for wines and whiskeys have been established in Japan, and this is contributing to an uptick in consumption of Western alcoholic beverages in Japan. What are your thoughts on this point?
Onishi: Although this hasn’t made the headlines yet, various projects are going on overseas behind the scenes to produce sake using Japanese rice that is harvested locally and/or local water. Of course, it’s important that we protect and enhance the quality of our existing domestic breweries, but I think that, as you mentioned, setting up sake breweries one after the other overseas and letting awareness take root in local markets are important factors for expanding the industry base.
Once people in other countries get familiar with their own locally produced sake, it will also lead to people wanting to visit Japan to drink sake made in its birthplace. It’s just like when Japanese people visit wineries in Bordeaux or Napa Valley on their overseas trips. I’ll give you a concrete example later, but I don’t think that an increase in the number of breweries overseas would be a factor causing production volume to drop at existing domestic breweries. I think we need to look at the industry as a whole from a broader, long-term perspective.
Kato: There have been some success stories over the past 20 years or so of Japanese breweries concentrating their management resources on high-end daiginjo aimed at overseas markets. Since the 1980s, the Japanese auto industry and other manufacturing industries have stayed competitive by aggressively using overseas factories instead of relying on domestic production. Japan’s sake industry needs to make similar moves, and I wonder if we’d be able to produce a cycle that would ultimately strengthen the brand power of Japanese breweries.
Onishi: Right now, we’re helping out a project to build a sake brewery on land owned by local capital in an Asian country and distribute sake there. We’re inviting young brewers and people who are knowledgeable about sake brewing from Japan, with the goal of teaching the local people how to make sake so that they can promote it there. We believe that this kind of initiative is one way to stimulate the development of core human resources around the world who will develop a love for and a familiarity with sake and create a large local market. This likely will also greatly contribute to an increase in exports from Japan, the home of sake.
The current bottleneck for this initiative is the need for technicians — that is, skilled sake brewers — in their 30s and 40s, who can go overseas to train young local people. We haven’t gotten there yet, but we hope for a cycle to take shape that will enable us to turn out dozens of these young technical leaders each year who can play an active role overseas in this regard. I look forward to seeing the worldwide emergence of intriguing sakes with local roots that are produced with the right kinds of techniques.
Kato: I see. This is similar to how Japanese food has spread around the world. For example, if you go to New York or London, most of the chefs making sushi at sushi restaurants are non-Japanese Asians, but this doesn’t mean that Japanese sushi’s culture and brands are falling apart. On the contrary, high-end sushi restaurants with highly skilled sushi chefs are now places where you can’t get a reservation, and celebrities are eating Japanese food at high prices that would be unthinkable in Japan.
Onishi: That’s right. And people who’ve become Japanese food afficionados travel all the way to Japan to enjoy its sushi. Naturally, they also enjoy fine Japanese sake. I think the exact same thing will happen with sake, and I believe this is one solution for saving Japan’s sake breweries, which are currently struggling under difficult business conditions.
Kato: The Japanese sushi industry is evolving rapidly, and it looks like the gears are falling into place for a virtuous cycle of domestic and international demand. Some Japanese may not like the idea of having conveyor-belt sushi restaurants or foreign sushi chefs. However, sushi is getting more accepted by the world’s 8 billion people, and it seems that the brand value of Japanese food culture is going up. I also feel that if the mindset of people in the sake industry can change, and they go and seek out help from others who support this mindset, the sake industry could look completely different in a few decades.
Listening to you speak, I could picture Miss SAKE playing a connecting role for the use of overseas capital, the local development of human resources overseas, and technician training in Japan. I hope your grand vision becomes a reality, and I’m happy to offer my support.
(Part 2)
