The “Beau-Zone” Layer – Nishide “100 Year Sake”
From Ishikawa Prefecture.
Junmai Daiginjo
SMV: +3 Acidity: 2.0
This Beau-Zone Layer has been a long time coming! And in all honesty, I selected it because we as a store didn’t do justice to this brew for quite some time. In a word, we sort of screwed up and we found out that we did when a customer alerted us to the uniqueness and specialness of this sake and how we sold it! We let the cool bottle be the talking point, which worked because it’s one of our top selling “gifting sakes,” for obvious reasons. Look at the throwback to the 17th century “Kutani Yaki” porcelain artwork gracing the flip-top bottle with a slick wooden box. It screams old school cool sake visually! And because of this we used the brewery’s own words in our review, which focuses more on the bottle rather than what’s inside the bottle.
Flash forward to a few weeks back when a recipient of this gift sake called the store and asked if the sake was off or damaged? You see when you gift a sake, typically it is a fruity or extremely clean Junmai Daiginio that dances more on the clean and pristine side of sake. That type of sake is more user friendly and folks new to sake, or gift-recipients, would have a better chance of liking it, because it is “safe.” This Nishide “100 Year Sake” is safe, but it is safe for sake folks who like Ishikawa-style Junmai Daiginjo sake that drinks more like a Yamahai-style sake that is rich, dry, bright with elegant complexity. Huh? It’s a better drinking gift for red wine lovers or those who like natural wines and beers, rather than people who like light, clean, and/or fruity Junmai Daiginjos.
So the recipient who thought the sake was off actually was tasting an excellent Ishikawa-style sake that plays with flavors such as dried apricot, fig, mint, brioche, King’s Hawaiian sweet rolls, barley tea, oatmeal, daikon, black pepper, sea salt, toasted sourdough, with a ton of umami tones on a slipper water-like flow. And it has a little color to the fluid, because it is not charcoal-filtered (Muroka) and the nose has some gamey, soy sauce, dashi, brown sugar, cocoa bean, pickled radish, and miso aromas reminiscent of a true yamahai style sake. In other words, it is yummy! And it is made with all very local ingredients including the Gohyakumangoku rice milled to 50%, the Hakusan water, and of course featuring a special sake brewing yeast known as “Kuratsuki” kobo, which was discovered 100 years ago and is the motivation for this special gifting sake that is known as the 100 Year Sake.
By all means keep gifting this really delicious and unique sake that is made very well, and looks great, but give it to those with a more complex and robust palate looking to explore how sake excels in the umami game and the lore of brewing days gone by.