Sake News from Japan / Sake Muse
IWC 2018 trophy winners and category breakdown
A quick look back at the 2018 International Wine Challenge (IWC) sake division, this time with a Sankei Biz article that names the trophy winners and gives numbers for entries in each category. The trophies were announced at an awards lunch held on 18 May 2018 in...
Spiced sake, and it’s not just the tasting notes
The Kahoku Online News site covers a spicy sake - not just with hints of spice picked up by an expert taster, but actual spice added during brewing.Fonia Terra is another launch from experimental venture company Wakaze, based in Tsuruoka, Yamagata. This latest entry...
Old traditions and new dishes: Work experience at a Kyoto brewery
The Fushimi Keizai Newspaper reports on a collaboration between the Saitō brewery in Fushimi and the Umedai Garden Internship company, set up in April 2018 to offer work and study programmes for students aged 18 to 28. It is currently placing about 60 students from a...
A sake that costs as much as wholesalers want to pay
The Fukui Newspaper Online site reports on a brewery with an unusual wholesale pricing strategy - bidding.The article claims the Kokuryū (black dragon) brewery is the first ever to set wholesale prices this way, as it prepares to put its cold-store matured...
The kids are all right: Niigata university students take on sake
The Fukushima Minyū site looks at attitudes towards sake among university students in Niigata Prefecture.The article starts off in a place you may already have seen photos or video of - the sake/coin vending paradise that is Ponshukan Niigata Station. You pay your...
Sake, Italian style
Tatsuya Iida reports on the Zakzak site about a sake bar pairing the Japanese drink with Italian food. There are a warren of narrow back streets in the Sangenjaya area of Tokyo, crammed with bars and known as the "golden triangle" or "bar crawl heaven", and that's...
Prize prefectures at the Annual Japan Sake Awards 2018
The Sankei West site reports on the Annual Japan Sake Awards 2018, and sees which prefectures came out on top. More literally translated as the "national new sake appraisal", the competition is held jointly by the National Research Institute of Brewing (NRIB) and the...
A naturally cool way to mature sake: go underground
The Iwate Nippo site reports on a brewery with a "natural refrigerator" used to mature their sake at low temperatures. Iwate is famous for the Ryūsendō limestone cavern, one of the three largest in Japan, found near the town of Iwaizumi - which is also home to the...
French sake in Japan: Report from Kamigata Nihonshu World 2018
The Cookbiz Soken site covers the Kamigata Nihonshu World 2018 event held in Osaka, including some special guests: sake brewers from France.Held on 28 April 2018, the event is hosted by sake brewers and sake-loving bars and restaurants. This year saw 20 pairs of...
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The translations/summaries of Japanese language news articles or other resources, personal commentary and other content provided on this site or through its associated newsletter are part of a personal project to increase the amount of information about Japanese sake and related fields available in English.
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All translations/summaries and other content are © 2017-2026 Arline Lyons.