Niconico News covers three new autumnal cocktails available for a limited time at Kurand Sake Market as part of its Autumn Fair from 14 September to 30 November 2018.
Kurand Sake Market is a chain of bars centred around Tokyo that offers all-you-can-drink access to over 100 sake from around the country for JPY 3,240 (tax included) which also covers the cocktails.
The three cocktails are:
- Kanjuku ume beer: A sweet, smooth beer cocktail made with matured umeshu from a sake brewery.
- Dashiwari: Sake diluted with an original dashi (dried bonito and kelp stock) blend, full of flavour and sprinkled with a flaked oden topping mix (おでんの粉, oden no kona) to draw out both sweetness and umami.
- Sake maple ice cream: Not sure if I’d call this one a cocktail, but it’s a scoop of rich maple ice cream in a masu with an ochoko of matured koshu full of nutty flavours on the side.
The sake maple ice cream comes with a sake called I LOVE CHOCO, which was developed by Kurand to pair with chocolate. Matured for 10 years, it has a powerful aroma similar to whisky and a deep, complex flavour.
The dashiwari cocktail apparently comes from a traditional way of drinking sake at oden shops, mixing the broth from the oden into the sake to dilute it. Out of the five traditional Japanese flavours of amami (甘味, sweetness), umami (旨味), shibumi (渋み, astringency), nigami (苦味, bitterness) and shiomi (塩味, saltiness), sake is supposed to go with everything except salt. However, mixing salty oden broth with sake adds the missing fifth flavour and enhances both sweetness and umami.
Links
- Original article (Japanese, Niconico News, 10 September 2018)
- Kurand Sake Market (English)