News

Until this year, if you wanted to taste authentic Japanese sake the way it was meant to be enjoyed -- unpasteurized, unfiltered and fresh from the brewing process - you pretty much had to get on a plane and fly to Japan.

Now, West Coast devotees of the Japanese rice beverage are finding their fix in Vancouver at what's being billed as North America's first premium sake "winery."

"I didn't anticipate such a crazy reaction by the public," said Masa Shiroki, owner of Artisan Sakemaker, a garage-sized operation on Granville Island that, for now, sells only direct to the public. "They just rushed out and bought everything up and by February 20th we were completely out."

Now into his third batch of about 30 cases, Mr. Shiroki says the original sense of novelty is giving way to significant repeat business, an encouraging sign for his three premium bottlings which, at $24.95 to $32, are competing with super-premium wines from British Columbia and even California.

His goal: to elevate the reputation of an ancient drink he says has been poorly understood in North America and even more poorly treated by those who bottle and serve it.

"Sake has been misintroduced in this society for the last four decades," said Mr. Shiroki, standing next to a gleaming tank the size of a Smart car in his modest, 800-square-foot storefront on a touristy lane called Railspur Alley. "People thought that it was a turpentine-like thing, you have to heat it up, and you have to quickly drink it down otherwise it doesn't taste good."

Sake, technically a beer because it's brewed from a grain rather than from grapes, is often compared to wine because of its alcohol content (typically 16 to 20 per cent), its lack of carbonation and its price. And the good stuff - which is designed to be consumed cold, preferably from a wine glass to funnel its complex aromas - also has tended, like wine, to vault hard-core aficionados into adjective-laden rapture.

"I smell Asian pears, apple, half-ripe melon, a little cucumber," Mr. Shiroki said recently over a cold glass poured out of a bottle from the Coke fridge that serves as his humble display case. "Grassy and minerally for sure. It's almost like a Chablis a little bit on the nose. It's wonderful, isn't it?"

It's also like no other sake you can buy in North America, he says.

Sake-making first came to this part of the world almost a century ago via a small plant in Hawaii in 1908. And while there are now seven U.S. producers registered with the Sake Association of America, Mr. Shiroki, a native of Japan and a former B.C. government trade officer overseeing Tokyo and Osaka, believes he's the first to make what he calls the real stuff.

For one thing, he is using genuine sake rice, a high-starch, brown-skinned variety imported from Japan. By contrast, other producers in North America, including the California arm of Japanese giant Gekkeikan, use common table varieties.

"It's not designer rice," said Bill Piper, vice-president of production for Gekkeikan in Folsom, Calif., which makes three popular styles, ranging from $5 to $10 (U.S.) a bottle, often served warm in Japanese restaurants. "You can buy it in the supermarkets."

Mr. Shiroki's second point of distinction is that he eschews pasteurization, a heat treatment used to stabilize the beverage for transport and room-temperature storage. Nor does he apply chemical filtration, which he says strips sake of its finer nuances. That means his sake must be refrigerated at all times. And once it's bottled, it should be consumed as soon as possible, preferably within a few months.

Aficionados prize sake for its silky, oily quality and a range of subtle flavours as complex as that of a fine wine, ranging from apple to fig to fresh vegetables, honey and minerals.

Mr. Shiroki's emergence as a self-taught toji, or sake brewer, is an unlikely career twist for a man who until 10 years ago was severely allergic to alcohol.

"I couldn't drink at all. I would pass out," he said.

The allergy subsided, fortunately, just as Mr. Shiroki, now 56, gave up his trade-liaison job to start importing sakes for Japanese companies eager to crack the Canadian market.

While he continues to import premium pasteurized brands, he says nothing beats the exuberance of raw sake straight from the settling tank.

It takes him about 45 days to make a 400-litre batch. The process involves milling down the rice to remove its harsh shell, introducing a mould to break the starch down into glucose and adding yeast to start the alcoholic fermentation. After three weeks, the grey stew is pressed through mesh to separate out the solids and is allowed to settle for another three weeks before bottling.

While other sake missionaries in Canada tend to promote the drink as an accompaniment to Japanese cuisine, particularly raw fish, Mr. Shiroki is taking a contrarian approach. At his modest tasting counter, he has been offering visitors small nibbles of non-Asian food, such as a French Morbier cheese and a Bavarian sausage, to demonstrate the drink's versatility at the table.

"Here's my message: There is no sushi here; there is no sashimi here; there is no Japanese food, period. What you get is something you'll find in your fridge every day," he said.

"My dream is the day when I go into someone's house whom I don't know and he opens up his fridge and there's a bottle of sake and he offers it to me with his favourite non-Japanese food. That will be the day."