Interview: Thomas Oda

Thomas Oda

Then I was supposed to go for one year to County Limerick for a foreign experience, but was able to stay and finish my university studies in Dublin. I moved to the UK afterwards to complete my studies and got a normal job in London in marketing. I was in the UK for 16 years, just working in companies. The last three years I was in a company called the Wine Society which sells wine to what they call members, because it’s a cooperative. So, it was a wine club, so to speak, and working there led me to various IWC dinners, etc. and that’s where I rediscovered the love of sake.

My love of wine led me to move to Bordeaux at the time of Brexit. Being Irish, I thought well, if the UK doesn’t want foreigners I might as well have a new challenge. So, I moved to Bordeaux and worked in an American company that had nothing to do with wine or sake.

It sold promotional products like branded pens and mouse pads and I was in charge of Japan, New Zealand and Australia. I worked there for seven years with my Japanese background and fluent English until we decided to pull out of the Japanese market, mainly due to the exchange rate, it just didn’t make sense any more. That led me to reinvent myself, to think about what to do because it was a good opportunity to review what I really want to do.

I’m turning 50 next year so I’m not young anymore but I thought why don’t I try something totally new that uses my cultural background from Japan and my passion for wine, but I thought I wouldn’t be able to compete making wine in Bordeaux against the French. So, I went to Kei-san, Kei Miyagawa in Paris. I studied WSET sake under him and told him that I would like to promote sake and he said, there are lots of ways of promoting sake but what do you want to do? Do you want to sell it, do you want to just talk about it or do you want to make it? And I hadn’t thought about making it until then and it hit me: oh, there is the option of making it.

I spent four months at Wakaze learning how to make sake and how to run a sake business in France. After that I spent another four months in Saitama, in Takizawa Shuzo which makes a lovely sparkling sake, they’re not known for their still jizake. They are in the Awazake Kyokai, and I wanted to learn how to make sparkling sake as well, so I spent four months there. That led me to go to the Japanese Shurui Sogo Kenkyujo in Hiroshima, the National Research Institute of Brewing.

That’s where all the toji go to learn how to make sake eventually, and this summer I went to the six-week course just like the other toji. So, I’m still very, very new to this industry but I thought, why don’t I try it? The fortunate thing about Bordeaux is that it has some of the softest water in France.

It is still hard compared to Japan, but more like an American hardness level of 140, which is similar to Miyamizu in Nada. So, it’s not like Paris or Evian, 300 or 400. That told me that it’s possible to try here.

I also wanted to use all local materials so I went to the Camargue in the south of France where they have lots of rice fields and they grow lots of Japanese rice–not sakamai, not sake-specific rice, but the rice used for onigiri and sushi.

At the moment I am trying refurbish a rented space, about 200 square metres, supplied with soft water, just on the outskirts of Bordeaux. And I hope we can produce from probably January next year. I’m test brewing with 10 litre buckets just to see what the sake is going to turn out like.

How is the test brewing working? Is the water suitable?

Oda: I think it’s working. Unfortunately, all the analysis tools I’ve ordered are coming next week so at the moment I only have what I can see: it’s bubbling and therefore it’s brewing. But I won’t know what the nihonshudo [sake meter value, SMV] or alcohol or acidity is until next week.

What are you using for the yeast?

Oda: I’m using a Bordeaux white wine yeast.

So, you’re not using a sake yeast at all, you’re using a wine yeast. What kind of sake are you aiming to make? A classic Japanese sake or something new?

Oda: At the moment I’m thinking of two lines, two distinctive lines. One I want to call, if the French allow me, a Grand Cru which would be the equivalent of a ginjoshu. Lots of sake are already being made in Europe but not in the Japanese clear and crisp style.

I know it’s mainly because of the polishing issue [i.e. the lack of a polishing machine in Europe] but I want to get as close to the Japanese standard as possible for my first sake. And for the second I’m thinking of making it as close as possible to Bordeaux white wine, so with good acidity, using shiro koji with a bit of sweetness to counterbalance it. That would go with not only seafood but all locally produced foods here and be a good introductory sake, easier to drink for the European palate, more familiar.

So if you use shiro koji for the white wine-style sake, are you going to use ki koji for the traditional one?

Oda: The plan is to make different batches, small batches and then have an external consultant for white wine and a sake specialist from Japan come and do an assemblage of the different batches. So, it won’t be consistent but will hopefully have the same characteristics every year.

I haven’t heard of anybody in Europe doing assemblage with sake yet, that’s going to be really interesting.

Oda: We are in Bordeaux and assemblage is a very Bordeaux way of doing things. And it lets me make continuous improvements every year.

From your own experience living in France and also participating in IWC, looking at it from the wine side, what are the barriers to French people starting to drink sake? 

Oda: There’s a lot of talk about sake. I see it in magazines, in fairs. Some people get hooked on it, but not everybody. 

I think it’s very difficult for a very traditional wine producing country to try something new that is still very unknown to them. Most people still think it’s a baiju, a distilled spirit with very high alcoholic strength. Changing that mindset is the first thing we need to do. 

It’s a collective thing amongst all sake evangelists, to get people to change their mind and let them try sake. And many of them wouldn’t like it, but some of them would, or some would drink it at certain occasions. And if I can replace at least one bottle of wine per year with sake, in the entire French population, that is a huge number of bottles of sake for a Japanese sake brewery to make.

That’s why you also have the white wine-style one, to lead people in.

Oda: And as I mentioned, I want to eventually launch a champagne-style bottle fermented sparkling sake, because I think sparkling is probably the easiest entry point to sake for Europeans. I know it’s also a question of price, but if the price is less than champagne they should at least try it.

From your experiences in tasting sparkling sake and making it in Saitama, what differences do you see between champagne and sparkling sake that would help or not for people drinking it? For example, sparkling sake is never as dry as champagne.

Oda: No, it’s never dry as champagne. It has no kick of acidity like champagne does. The sparkling sake in Saitama tended to be quite sweet. They deliberately make it sweet, and brewers like Chiyomusubi and Tenzan tend to make it slightly drier. And I know Hakkaisan makes sparkling sake with shiro koji, bringing it closer to champagne than other kinds of sparkling sake.

I would certainly use shiro koji for my sparkling sake. And when I make it I will do a proper disgorgement so that it will be clear. I know a lot of Japanese prefer usunigori or nigori but if Europeans see something cloudy they might think it’s a faulty bottle. It has a negative image.

Disgorgement is not just extremely difficult, it’s also very unfamiliar to sake makers, they would never do something like that normally.

Do you see sake, classical Japanese sake, as having any advantage for food pairing with French food?

Oda: Yes. You hear for example at Salon de Sake that probably at least half of sake consumption in Europe is with Japanese food or something Japanese. I think we need to get rid of that idea that it’s only suitable for Japanese food. I see that a lot of Michelin star restaurants have one or two bottles of sake as a novelty but I think more and more places, even casual bistros should have it. That’s the kind of place I want sake to get into, as a viable alternative to wine for local foods, not necessarily Asian foods.

The Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association have collaborating with the Association des Sommeliers Internationaux for several years, so there’s a lot of sommelier education and those sommeliers go to Michelin or other high class restaurants and try to get sake onto their menu–which is great, but it’s very top down. And I think for it to get into a local bistro, it will have to be more bottom up.

Oda: Which is more difficult, I think.

It is, because also that route will also be more price sensitive. And I think that’s a big problem, obviously for imported sake, because by the time it gets to Europe, it’s usually three or four times the price that it is in Japan. Is that somewhere where you think you can compete?

Oda: If we can start producing sake with the same profile as in Japan–I wouldn’t say the same level because it’s not about that. We just have a different way of making sake without rice polished, with no sake-specific rice here or even yeast to ferment at low temperature. But if we can produce a Japanese-type sake here at half the price, I think that is probably a way to convert bottom up.

So, you’re test brewing now with a view to starting kind of serious production in the early next year.

Oda: It all depends on how the test brewing goes. I don’t want to start producing at a larger scale until I’m satisfied with the taste. And there are hundreds, literally hundreds, of yeast that I can test in Bordeaux.

I know it’s hard for people who want to use sake yeast, they can only get the #7 and #9.

Have you problems with equipment? I know a lot of European brewers can take use some equipment meant or beer or from wine, such as tanks, but other items like steamers and presses have no equivalent.

Oda: The steamer is coming from Japan, that’s the main thing that I couldn’t really replicate here. I’m testing a vertical pneumatic wine press which is round and therefore difficult to use with sakabukuro. I’ve actually asked a sakabukuro maker in Japan to make me a round one that fits this vertical press. So I’ll test it and see what happens.

It’s certainly much easier to get the sakabukuro from Japan than the press.

Participants at the at the European Sake Summits at the Salon du Sake talked about importing machinery from Japan, including importing rice polishing machines, and electrical certification is a huge problem. Do you have that for the steamer?

Oda: The steamer fortunately already has a CE mark because Wakaze imported one before. I’m having problems importing a rice washer, even though it’s something I could make here, and it actually has no electrical components. In its simplest form it’s a bucket with a hose stuck on it, you connect it to a tap and the rice is washed. But customs officers in France are treating it as equipment and therefore I might need a CE mark, which is causing a bit of an issue.

You never know what customs are going to ask.

Are you importing koji as well, or do you have a European source?

Oda: I’m ordering tane koji from Akita Konno. I did ask if it’s okay to export and they said yes, because they send it to Wakaze all the time. It’s interesting, as they said they can’t send certain types of tane koji overseas but didn’t say exactly why.

Have you interacted with other sake brewers in Europe apart from Wakaze?

Oda: I’ve visited Kensho, Kanpai London, and obviously Larmes du Levant and Azerou, but we haven’t collaborated yet, I’m not at the level where I could collaborate. But I think everyone agrees that we should get together and exchange information, like the American Sake Guild, we should have one in Europe.

Oliver at Yamasake in Switzerland interned at Watanabe Shuzo in Gifu and Tom at Kanpai London did some work at Gekkeikan. But I think a lot of European sake brewers are starting off without much experience, so your training in Japan is very interesting.

Oda: It’s encouraging to see. Some of those people told me they’ve never been to Japan, they just watched YouTube and read some books and then decided to make sake. And there they are. It’s kind of refreshing to see that they can do it. They take it very lightly.

And in a way–it’s not like I want to prove it wrong, but there’s this old mentality that you need to at least work for 10 years to master something. I don’t think that’s necessary. It may be so in Japan but in the environment of Europe, where we are still in a very early stage, anybody who tries is very welcome.

What was it like studying in Hiroshima with the National Research Institute of Brewing?

Oda: The owner of the brewery I was working with contacted the teacher at the NRIB and told him that there’s this strange guy who wants to start brewing in France–brewing abroad is still a new concept, to these traditional people–and he wants study in Hiroshima. And as Hiroshima is controlled by the Kokuzeicho, the tax bureau, they said that officially anyone who is going to brew outside of Japan is categorically of no interest and therefore we cannot let him study here. So, if you want him to study here you must pretend that you’re employing him. That’s how I got in. And on the first day the teacher came to me and said, do not ever say that you’re going to brew anything outside of Japan, that’s the condition for you being here.

And then on the final day he told me, well, it’s finished now, so you might as well tell everybody!

He said that because he personally believes that anybody who wants to try in Europe will eventually help to grow exports so it’s a win-win situation. So, he thought it would be beneficial to let the other students know and for them to help me.

It was very Japanese. It was a very interesting six weeks. We had a lot of fun, we drank something like 200 isshobin over six weeks between 20 of us. I was the oldest, obviously. We still have a LINE group where people say, oh, this happened to my koji, what should do? And everybody helps each other out.

But in theory this would not be possible for any European brewer. It would have to be sponsored by a Japanese brewer and you would at least in theory have to be working in Japan because it’s run by the National Tax Agency.

Oda: And you would need fluent Japanese to follow the course. I did ask at the last lecture we had, with Utsunomiya-sensei who is a director at the JSS, what he thought about supporting breweries outside of Japan. And he said, obviously as head of the JSS I have absolutely no interest in that because we need to protect existing businesses in Japan. But on a personal note, I know that many of you will eventually fly abroad and start producing sake there. So, that was kind of hinting that they might eventually open up to foreign students.

What did you think of the other European breweries you visited?

Oda: Kensho have a different angle because they are originally a rice farm, not a sake maker, so it was very interesting. It was almost as difficult to get there as some of the sakagura in Japan. They’re small, but like Kura de Bourgogne they make miso and they have everything, not just sake. And their visitor infrastructure was very good.

It’s like at Kanpai, you have a kura visit with a little bit of umeshu to start and then a free sake paired with some food as they explain. That’s one small way of introducing new people to sake. I hope that in a few months or a few years I will have a similar system where I can accommodate someone who is totally new to sake at my kura and be able to explain it to them in French, that’s the most difficult part.

Do you see possibilities for collaboration with local winemakers or food businesses, not just other sake makers?

Oda: I’m not sure how I could collaborate with a local winemaker, other than having an external consultant who is a winemaker, a white wine specialist. And I know what he wants, which is to sell his used Sauternes barrels because he buys a few hundred every year and then needs to get rid of them after three years. He keeps telling me that I can age sake in Sauternes barrels, Wakaze does that but it’s not what I want to do. But that’s one way we can collaborate with winemakers.

The Arcachon area by the sea in Bordeaux used to grow oysters, but they died out 50 or 60 years ago for some reason. And Japanese oyster producers helped them to re-establish the oysters. So, there’s a story, a connection here already.

You have a connection with the oysters, the fact that the water hardness is similar to Miyamizu, it’s like you’re meant to be there!

If you have friends in Bordeaux who don’t know sake, how do you introduce it to them?

Oda: When we invite people to our house I often have a sparkling sake instead of champagne. Zaku, for example. It’s slightly sweet and spritzy and I tell them, this is sake. And they say, that’s not what I expected sake to taste like. So, that’s how I introduce them, with something fruity rather than heavy like an old-style jummaishu.

Koshu is quite like sherry, so that’s also somewhat familiar. Those are the bridges that I use.

And from there I can ask if they smell banana and talk about yeast, and if they’re interested I’ll bring them some Tengumai or another traditional heavier junmaishu.

A few times when I gave people junmaishu, they said it smells like rice–and what can you expect, it’s made from rice. But they said they don’t want a drink that tastes like rice with their food.

Is your sake is designed to be served cold, and drunk like a wine?

Oda: Yes. I think I need to be in familiar territory for my audience. Not that I don’t personally prefer something atsukan, especially in the winter.

Update 28 Apr 2025

I somehow managed to not record my half of the conversation so I no longer have the questions for this interview, the following is all from Thomas Oda!

Oda: I was back in Japan briefly in March and I brought some initial test brewing results with me. My teachers from Hiroshima and Marie Chiba tasted them and gave me some feedback and told me what I need to do. I’m now working on my second or third batch and it’s looking a bit more promising.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to where I want to be, but I had my first tasting yesterday with some wine people from Bordeaux. I served them a sparkling and they said yes, people would buy this. So, hopefully I’ll get there. But replicating the recipe and getting the same quality is difficult.

The feedback I got in Japan was very consumer orientated. I was told that the alcohol is low enough and the sake has a bit of sweetness, not very sweet like Mio, more like Shichiken. I need to filter more to make the sake clearer. I still don’t have the disgorgement machine so I have what you would call kasei-nigori or origarami.

I was told not to make it extremely dry and instead to keep a little bit of sweetness, which I did. And then to not make it as bubbly as champagne. So, it was good at about two to three bar, about the same pressure as Coca-Cola.

The sake has a very small bubbles thanks to the secondary fermentation, very easy to drink, but I need a little bit more acidity as I left it too sweet. If I reduce the sweetness a little the acidity will show a bit more and it will be balanced.

But it’s still at the testing stage because I don’t know how much yeast I will put in the second fermentation and how much sugar or nihonshudo I should leave to make it dry. So, it’s a bit of trial and error at this stage. I’m still making the still sake, but it just so happened that the sparkling was at a more drinkable stage yesterday so I offered it for tasting.

I can’t really say about suitability for the Japanese market because my Japanese assessors are not typical Japanese drinkers. The Hiroshima professors have tasted all sorts of things. I told them initially that it’s really bad, and they said they’ve tasted worse so I shouldn’t worry, but I could leave a little bit more glucose to hide the nigami [bitterness].

Acidity always tends to be high with wine yeast. You need to balance it out either with sweetness or glucose otherwise it will be too acidic and it’s not easy at least for Japanese to consider it as sake. Westerners who are used to drinking very dry white wine might understand that level of acidity, but the Hiroshima teachers would not see it as sake.

They also told me that whenever I make a recipe with 5 or 10 litres, when I increase that to 50, 100 or 1,000 litres the results will obviously be totally different. So, the advice was that if you’re even 70% happy, start making it at 50 or 100 litres. Don’t get hung up on trying to do it perfectly at 5 litres because you’ll never be able to replicate it, for good or bad.

Things are coming along and the factory itself is ready. I had my first meeting with my label branding people and I’m quite happy with what they came up with, it just needed a tweak.

We have now decided to launch the sparkling from the start. I initially wanted to keep it until we are happy with the still sake, but I think it’s easier for Westerners to try sparkling sake first so long as the price is reasonable. And I will have a taster pack of half bottles for people to try.

I asked a famous Japanese calligrapher who lives in Bordeaux to provide calligraphy for the label. He has done lots of different things, his latest is the Star Wars title. So, I wanted him to come up with our Sake de Bordeaux writing, which he did.

He used a very old character for mizu (water, 水) for the S. When you write the character for water in cursive [kuzushi] it becomes the S of Sake de Bordeaux. And it’s called Mizunobe Shuzo in Japanese, where mizunobe means beside the water. So, we’re using that S as a label. It’s a bit like the labelling for Abe, a very simple S drawn on a white label in a slightly different colour and embossed. And it will be slightly different depending on whether it’s for the sparking or still or whatever. I wanted to have something very minimalist, simple, but not cheap, if you know what I mean.

I haven’t brewed a volume large enough to use the press, but the whole team from Wakaze are coming next month and said they are happy to help in any way they can as they know I’m alone and there are things that you can’t do alone. So, they’re staying for two days and offered to do things like press or even clean. So, I said okay, help me try out the machinery. I’m looking forward to it.

I aim to officially open in November. Before that happens I need to clean thoroughly and obviously make the base sake, there will hopefully be about six different recipes. It’s still to be confirmed but if Marie Chiba is happy with my test results in June she will come over and use the six base sake for assemblage on 13 November 2025. Jean-Jacques Dubourdieu, the son of a famous white wine professor and owner of a Chateau in Bordeaux. 

We’ll make two labels, one designed to be as close to Japanese sake as possible, which is Marie’s responsibility, and the other is to be as friendly to the first-time sake drinker as possible, for someone who is used to wine, with more acidity, more components, something to go with oysters. That will be down to Jean-Jacques Dubourdieu. We will decide on the assemblage for those two wines on November 13 and then in the evening I will blend and fill about 10 bottles with the new labels so that people can taste the sake at the opening on November 14.

I started working with Marie after sending her a cold email, saying I know you’re extremely busy and you must get hundreds of requests like this but I’m starting a new sake brewery in Bordeaux and I want you to taste some of the sake with me. And she originally thought no, but as she knew Imai [former toji at Wakaze Paris] she contacted him and he asked her to help me, because I’m serious or something, so she decided to help me.

Like any other toji I speak to, there are several introductory tests to see if I know enough to make sake or not. Obviously, she’s very knowledgeable, she would throw me a sake and quiz me on the acidity, all sorts of things that I should know. And once I pass that test, okay, we can talk. She knows a lot of people in Paris and in London so it’s also an opportunity for her to come to Europe again if we invite her to do the assemblage.

I won’t be at Salon du Sake this year as it will be too early, the first commercial batch will be ready on 14 November. I don’t want to rush things and not have the end product. Once we’re past 14 November I will sit down with my business partner in Japan, make a list of competitions and select what we want to go to.

I don’t know if I’ll enter competitions as it’s not made with sake yeast and so it’s not going to taste anything like Japanese sake.

I don’t want to overproduce so I will start little by little, on-trade at first. I’ll go around restaurants doing tastings and convincing them to put my sake on their wine list.

It won’t necessarily be Japanese restaurants. I’m thinking of generic restaurants in Paris and London. Obviously, I’m preferential to Bordeaux, just because it’s easier for me to sell nearby and I know people like Chloe Gampierre, who works with Otsukimi and is a Kura Master judge. Also, Marie Runoz, another Kura Master judge who has a Japanese restaurant. She said to bring a bottle any time, they’ll taste it and if they like it they’ll stock it. So obviously I’ll prioritise these local people. But I will not try to go to mass production.

I hope I will outgrow my current space eventually, but I am planning to use it for at least five or six years. The good thing is it’s a new warehouse and I’m renting just one space. So, once I get too big, if the tenant next door moves out I can rent that unit and knock a few holes through the walls to double my space. The tanks I bought are twice the size I need for the production volume of the first three sake so I have capacity.

I want to stick to my philosophy of trying to get as many local ingredients as possible, even though koji isn’t a local ingredient. Unlike Japan, you don’t need a licence to produce your own wine in France, you can just go to a shop and buy a huge variety of wine yeast like you would go to a supermarket and buy bread yeast. The company who sold me the tank stock all sorts of wine yeast, and if they don’t have the ones I’m looking for I just tell them that I want to test this one and they will stock it for me. It’s something like 10 euro a bag, and then off you go, you can produce whatever you want.

I need to finalise the recipe and do a trial run of all the machines, as if I’m doing a thousand litre fermentation, then a really good clean before starting brewing probably in the first week of September. Six people from Wakaze people are coming in May, in three weeks, they will be the first visitors and they have the critical eye to tell me where I need to make improvements or changes. Some of the things I’m doing I obviously learned from them when I was training there last year. I also want to make everything natural, in the sense that I don’t use any chemicals for cleaning, just boiling water, ozonated water and alcohol.