{"id":378557,"date":"2021-03-19T16:41:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T15:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/?p=378557"},"modified":"2023-04-27T16:14:42","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T14:14:42","slug":"japanese-sake-bible-bokrecension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/utan-kategori\/japanese-sake-bible-bokrecension\/","title":{"rendered":"The Japanese Sak\u00e9 Bible | bokrecension"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Not only wine is worth drinking. Sak\u00e9 too. That is certainly Brian Ashcraft\u2019s conviction. He tries to convey all his passion for sake and all his knowledge (or at least a good part of it) in his book The Japanese Sak\u00e9 Bible. And he does an excellent job of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sake (as it is also written) is made from rice. But it is not quite as simple to make sak\u00e9 as making wine. When you make wine, you simply pick the grapes, crush them and let them ferment. (Yes, this is, of course, wildly simplified.) It\u2019s a lot more complicated to make sak\u00e9, and the knowledge and skills of the maker of sak\u00e9 play a perhaps even more critical role than in winemaking.<\/p>\n

After you have harvested the rice, you need to \u201cpolish\u201d it, remove the outer layer. Then you need to get some mould to work its magic on the rice. The mould affects the starch in the rice and breaks it down to sugar that the yeast can ferment into alcohol. The whole process is very manual and involves a lot of hands-on work by the sake-maker. The sak\u00e9 master is perhaps more important than where the sake comes from. Another difference from wine is that whereas wine is basically just made from one ingredient, grapes, plus its origin, sak\u00e9 has five pillars to build its character on: rice, water (that is added), koji (the result of the mould\u2019s action), yeast, and also its origin, or the \u201csoil\u201d as the author says.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Japanese Sak\u00e9 Bible by Brian Ashcraft, published by Tuttle, copyright BKWine Photography<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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But there are also many similarities to wine. Using different kinds of rice makes a big difference, just like different kinds of grape varieties. Sak\u00e9 can be drunk young (without ageing), or aged. It can be aged in oak casks, or be \u201cwhite\u201d. And there is, of course, the vast variety of tastes and styles.<\/p>\n

The bulk of Brian Ashcraft\u2019s book is about how sake is made, a good dose of history, and which the leading producers are. He also explains in great detail the different types of styles of sake. There\u2019s sak\u00e9 to serve cold, or at room temperature and even hot. There\u2019s sparkling sake, and there\u2019s oak-aged sake. Sake that goes with food and sake that you should drink on its own. A world to explore.<\/p>\n

The book also has a buyer\u2019s guide with a selection of the world\u2019s top 100 sakes. All are presented with tasting notes commentaries, a rating and even recommended food pairings.<\/p>\n

The book is elegantly presented with plenty of colour photographs, both from the author\u2019s own travels in Japan as well as a lot of fascinating historical photos. The writing style is easy-going, almost modern magazine-style, just like the structure of the book. Some chapters are a bit over-lapping, good if you forget; there are inserts that tell stories to illustrate specific points, a bit like a glossy magazine. It is probably a book that is best read by dipping in here and there, rather than reading from cover to cover, and then going back once in a while to dig deeper.<\/p>\n

The Japanese Sak\u00e9 Bible<\/strong> by Brian Ashcraft<\/strong> (published by Tuttle) is just what it says; it is a gold mine of information for the one who wants to discover sake.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Page spread from The Japanese Sak\u00e9 Bible by Brian Ashcraft, published by Tuttle, copyright BKWine Photography<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Page spread from The Japanese Sak\u00e9 Bible by Brian Ashcraft, published by Tuttle, copyright BKWine Photography<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not only wine is worth drinking. Sak\u00e9 too. That is certainly Brian Ashcraft\u2019s conviction. He tries to convey all his passion for sake and all his knowledge (or at least a good part of it) in his book The Japanese Sak\u00e9 Bible. And he does an excellent job of it. Sake (as it is also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":378549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[616,2355,341,325],"class_list":["post-378557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-japan-sv","tag-sake","tag-sprit","tag-vinbocker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bkwine.com\/sv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}