Sake News from Japan / Sake Muse

Much attention has been focused on the fact that a) less people in Japan are drinking alcohol, b) younger people are most likely to not drink, and c) when younger people do drink, they don't choose sake.  PR Times reports on the results of a survey carried out at the...

I came across an interesting factoid while looking at the ICHI-GO-CAN press release listed below - the company Agnavi claim that cans make up 50% of alcoholic drinks containers worldwide. [Why does nobody cite their sources?! The only other figure I could find from an...

An article by Chiho Kusaka on MSN.com pokes fun at the Japanese for drinking wine with sushi when the rest of the world is drinking sake with Japanese food, and notes that more tourists in Japan are seeking it out.  Opening with quotes from tourists about food pairing...

Oricon News carries a press release on the use of biotechnology techniques to identify where and when a sake was made (following on from identifying where a sake was made using a unique signature of isotopes from brewing water, which I covered a few issues ago).  [Is...

As you'll have seen in this newsletter and many other places last year, the extreme summer heat in Japan made a lot of rice harder and less soluble than usual. Instagram is currently full of breweries and farmers planting out rice seedlings, and you have to wonder how...

Annual Japan Sake Awards (official title), National New Sake Appraisal, zenkoku shinshu kanpyōkai (全国新酒鑑評会), whatever you call it, the results are out! Currently held jointly by the Japan Sake and Shōchū Makers Association (JSS) and the National Research Institute of...

Small, light, non-breakable... these are my requirements for gifts to be shipped/carried overseas, but in this case it describes a new format for sake packaging, soft pouches.  Although you may be more used to seeing these used for baby food or sports gels, they are...

ID10 Japan, who are behind the Kura One range of 180 ml aluminium cans with the branding of the source brewery, have launched a gift box containing three sake and three types of nama chocolate infused with them. If you've somehow avoided the Royce nama choco at...

While I am the only person involved in this newsletter and all views are definitely my own, this is more speculative than I normally get. But a few things got me thinking. As I mentioned, I used to live in the Ena area so I contacted someone I know and asked them...