In Japan, the word sake and the associated Japanese kanji character means alcoholic beverage. What we know in the West as sake is in fact called Nihonshu in Japan, although in casual conversation Japanese usually use the term sake or O sake, especially when dealing with foreigners. Nihonshu is a beverage consisting of rice, water and yeast. The cheaper versions found in convenience stores are usually futsushu and use table rice in the brewing process.
    Higher grades will use rice specifically grown for making Nihonshu known as sakamai. There are many different types of sakamai grown in different regions of Japan. Likewise, there are many different types of yeast used in the brewing process. All rice and yeast used have certain characteristics and brewers around Japan use different combinations to produce different flavour profiles.
    Sake, like most other alcoholic beverages, comes in different grades. The difference in grades is primarily determined by the amount that the brewer has chosen to polish the grains of rice to achieve a classification standard and taste effect. Rice polishing itself refers to the process of polishing off the unwanted fats and proteins in the rice grains that are responsible for the less desirable taste attributes.
    What is left behind is the highly prized starch concentrated in the center of the grain. This percentage of the grain remaining for brewing is referred to a semai buai. In general the more that the rice has been polished the more refined the taste will be and accordingly the sake will usually be more expensive.
    The grades one will want to be familiar with to take advantage of being in Japan are honjozo and ginjo. Honjozo refers to sake that contains rice that has been polished to 70% or less whereas ginjo has been polished an additional 10% to achieve a semai buai of 60%. If the brewer chooses to polish the rice even further to at least 50% or less of the grain remaining, the sake is referred to as daiginjo.
    Honjozo, ginjo, and daiginjo may all have a certain percentage of distilled alcohol added to their ingredients to further change the taste. However, if the sake has a classification of junmaishu, the sake will only be composed of rice, water and yeast. The debate over what is better, sake with or without distilled alcohol, will rage for millennia. In the end, what one prefers is always a matter of taste.
    Many a foreigner arriving in Japan has had limited interaction with Japanese sake and what experience they did have may not have been entirely positive. The piping-hot futsushu brought to our table at the combination Japanese/ Chinese restaurant somewhere in the Mid-West hardly counts as being representative of what this fine brew is really all about. After all, who likes hot alcohol?
    In fact the rules regarding serving temperature vary according to what the brewer was trying to achieve in his flavour profile and what the drinker may prefer. For example the brewer may have produced a sake to be consumed warmed so as to remove tastes one might find unpleasant at cooler temperatures. Similarly, high-quality ginjos are most often consumedchilled so one can absorb their inherent, unadulterated qualities.
    No matter what the intent for a particular sake is, under no circumstance is it to be served hot. The safest course of action is to do some research about the sake and how it is best served, or ask the proprietor for their recommendation. In the instance where one is given a bottle as a gift and therefore is hesitant to open it for fear of committing a faux pas, start out by drinking it highly chilled right out of the fridge and allow it to open before you as it traverses the temperature range. If it fails to satisfy try heating it in a sake warmer. If after all that, the sake fails to impress, then move on to another bottle – life is too short.