日本酒 — Blog - Aonghas Crowe

This nihonshu (sake) sells for ¥800,000 a bottle in the super box at the Dome, something I find outrageous. Why, I would never pay more than ¥650,000 for it . . .

Joking aside, the 800-grand price is no lie. I checked online to see what the actual price of the sake was and found it retailing for ¥350,000, which is still eye-wateringly expensive. I suspect the price is high for promotional reasons rather than taste. The box Reikyō comes in, though, is rather nice.

The most expensive thing I have drunk so far, I believe, was a tequila that was the equivalent to 50 bucks a shot. I ended up spilling half of it in my lap when I sneezed. Bad form!

A hundred dollars for a good bottle of champagne. A hundred fifty for Ron Zacapa XO or Reserva de la Familia Cuervo . . . Yes. But 350,000 yen for a bottle of sake that will probably give you a headache the next day? Nope!

Apparently only 300 bottles of Nizawa’s sake are produced.

I should have just said, yes, when she asked me, but I replied honestly that, no, I didn't drink much nihonshu anymore.

Oh, there was a time when I did, when I could polish off an isshô bin, a 1.8ℓ bottle of sake in one sitting, but to do so today would be well-nigh suicidal.

"Nevertheless," I said, "I wouldn't mind trying some of yours."

As it was early spring, the brewery had several versions of recently bottled sake on hand—namazake (unpasteurized sake), genshu (undiluted sake), nigorizake (cloudy, unfiltered sake), and so on.

She poured me a glass of the genshu and I was pleasantly surprised.

While most sake is diluted with water, bringing the alcohol content down to 14-16%, the unadulterated genshu can be rather potent. Toyomura's own genshu has an alcohol content of 19% and goes down like a mellow grappa.

The Toyomura Brewery, located in Tsuyazaki, Fukuoka, was built in the seventh year of Meiji (1874) and flourished throughout the Meiji and Taishô eras, thanks to the role the town used to play as a hub for seafaring traffic.