A complete guide to sake from the sake guru at Ototo Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• Accessibility Statement
• Box Office
• MeToo Founder Tarana Burke Speaks Defiantly After Weinstein Verdict Overturned: "Not A Blow, A Clarion Call"
• New York’s fanciest ‘Korean wave’ restaurants go where L.A. doesn’t: caviar and kimchi
• The little-known California sake you didn’t know you needed
• California's Craft Sake Movement Has Come Into Its Own

“If we can grow California sake into its own thing, that rising tide can lift all ships for the industry as a whole,” echoes Rugg. “That would be our long-term hope.” The next step is a tasting room, a tiny sub-500 square-foot space right in the historic Sawtelle Japantown neighborhood. It’s in the works at 1836 Sawtelle Boulevard now, not far from the unlisted apartment they’ve been using up until now. They’re committed to bringing sake production into Los Angeles County too — as Covina’s Nova Brewing has already done — and hope to have their own facility by the end of the year. Once both are live, Sawtelle Sake will be a powerful, consumer-facing force for craft sake not just locally, but for all of California.

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Accessibility Statement

Reasonable efforts toward improving seamless, accessible, and unhindered use of websites by customers and potential customers is generally a worthwhile goal. Moving closer to this goal will often depend on the knowledge the company has regarding any particular difficulties those using the website might encounter, as well as available resources and improvements with technology. As a demonstration of their commitment to a future for Californian sake, Sawtelle’s co-owners and brewers Troy Nakamatsu and his partner Maxwell Leer plan to open their first tasting space in Sawtelle’s Japantown sometime next year. Nakamatsu is Yonsei and comes from a lineage of field workers by way of Kauai and Oahu, Hawaii. Bridging the distance of history and vision, Sawtelle proudly advertises its collaboration with the California Ricelands Waterbird Foundation on each of its labels, as its efforts towards helping protect the fields it relies upon. At the opposite end — my end — is a martini variation of sake and shochu punctuated with dry vermouth, yuzu bitters and peppercorns.

Box Office

NiigataKnown as the Napa of the sake world, Niigata is home to many well-known, high-producing breweries. The region started to make its signature light, crisp and dry sake in the 1970s. Our website may link to third party web stores, ordering platforms, or retailers that sell our goods or products online. We do not have control over the structure of these websites and are unable to modify them at all and we are not responsible for the accessibility of these third-party websites that we do control. Access to any company's website can be challenging for persons having certain disabilities.

MeToo Founder Tarana Burke Speaks Defiantly After Weinstein Verdict Overturned: "Not A Blow, A Clarion Call"

Soft water is more appropriate for brewing things like ginjo and daiginjo. Nigori (濁り)This style of sake is often called unfiltered but it’s actually lightly filtered, which gives the sake a cloudy appearance. They tend to be a little sweeter due to the existence of rice solids and unfermented long chain sugars.

Chef Dan Rabilwongse grew up in Echo Park, blocks from Budonoki’s corner location in rapidly changing Virgil Village. He cooked at some of L.A.’s most ambitious restaurants — Urasawa and Bouchon, both closed, and current guiding lights Hayato and Tsubaki — before teaming with Bedroussian and Hartley. They began Budonoki as a pop-up, including appearances at Tsubaki’s next-door sibling Ototo and at Melody a two-minute walk away on Virgil.

New York’s fanciest ‘Korean wave’ restaurants go where L.A. doesn’t: caviar and kimchi

And, now Girthmasterr wants to pay her back by helping her retire, and a collab with Ye could help. At Flask & Field, the focus is on stocking natural wine and craft spirits from small producers and artisans. Chef Avner Levi’s West Adams pasta bar Cento features Sawtelle Sake’s Pink Can, a sake-yuzu-hibiscus blend, as its go-to aperitif, paired with seasonal starters like grilled octopus, steak tartare, and an endive caesar salad with bottarga. Does it have that organically scruffy, swing-by-after-work, not-quite-a-bar-but-not-quite-a-restaurant third space vibe?

The increased vibrancy can connect with people who drink certain styles of white wine. These sakes are usually released as seasonal, limited edition products. It’s been seven years since I moved from my native California to become a writer in New York City, even longer since I spent my days as a winery cellar hand, scrubbing the tanks of their tartrate crystals and cleaning wine barrels of sludgy, grimace-tinted lees. As a Yonsei (fourth-generation) Japanese American, I was often one of the only women of color working in those warehouses. HiroshimaThe area has very soft water that is low in mineral content, so the sakes from this area tend to be softer, more aromatic, gentler and more elegant.

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Yamahai (山廃)Near the turn of the 20th century, a researcher at the National Institute for Brewing Studies in Japan figured out that if you raise the temperature and let the rice, koji and water hang out, the rice will dissolve on its own. Yamahai sake is typically gamy, earthy and nutty, and often compared to the funky flavors and acidity of natural wine. Some is separated to be mixed with the koji and some is reserved for the brewing process. The rice for the koji goes into a humidity- and temperature-controlled room where it is inoculated with the koji. This allows the koji to grow and feed off the starch in the rice and convert it to sugar, not alcohol. We anticipate that from time to time, within our resources, we will be making modifications to parts of our website, and possibly modifications to accessibility of our website.

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Yamahai and kimoto sakes that have a little more umami and sweetness do well warm. Good importers will put preferred serving temperatures on the bottles. KyotoThe soft water in Kyoto creates a more delicate style of sake, which pairs well with the region’s subtle cuisine. IshikawaThe hard water in this region makes the sake more muscular, savory and umami-rich. That combined with the hard water creates a burly style of sake.

The ROW DTLA bottle shop Flask & Field, owned and operated by Miriam Yoo, has an impressive selection of natural wine and unique craft spirits, such as Mexican corn liqueur, artisanal sojus, and green tea gin from Kyoto. They also host tastings and classes and sell a variety of Sawtelle Sake’s freshest offerings. Over time, the two-time James Beard nominee tweaked the blueprint for Den’s flagship Blue Label, raising the acidity level from that of most imported sakes to one better suited to cut through the richness of Californian and other American cuisines. These days, he explains, sake is designed to be far too versatile to be paired only with traditional Japanese dishes such as sushi or udon (though, of course, it’s still delicious with those meals, too). Sako recommends pairing Blue Label with Castelvetrano olives, which can create a flavor sensation reminiscent of a dirty martini, or enjoyed alongside the acidity of a late-summer tomato or fresh pesto sauce on pizza or in a pasta. Daiginjo and ginjo are mostly served cold to preserve the delicate aromatics.

Over a thousand sake enthusiasts attend from around the world to test their skills at blind tastings, and celebrate through large bottle pours, and even sips from silver bowls of sake overflow, as is traditionally done from the wooden sake boxes called masu in a symbol of generosity. This past October, Den Sake, Sequoia Sake, Sawtelle Sake, and Nova Brewing Company were all participating vendors at Sake Day, stepping away from their steaming warehouses and distribution routes to connect with sake drinkers. Equally, it’s a chance to celebrate the abundance of the growing sake community, in California and abroad. One can’t help but imagine that room filled with the spirits of the Japanese American laborers and dreamers that came before them, cheering them on.

But labels are fluid by default in Los Angeles, and the original aims of an izakaya are probably antithetical to the expectations around a bumping restaurant in the city’s hotbed. People sitting along the industrial-blue booths will likely be wriggling between tightly spaced tables to reach their spots. The mood can lull you into a happy place that felt far away even five minutes ago, after scouring the neighborhood for parking. Off-dry German Riesling → Kamoizumi Kome Kome, because it’s bright and just a tad sweet. But real warm sake is heated properly in a water bath and brewed with the intention of being served warm.

Sake is a brewed alcoholic beverage made through a process called multiple parallel fermentation. The main ingredients are sake rice (a rice that has a much larger and starchier center than table rice), water and koji (a fungus that aids in fermentation and turns the starch in the rice into sugar). Like the “bright new star” of their company's name, Nova’s flagship nama sakes, named Gravity and Eclipse, are imbued with painstaking attention toward honoring Japan’s brewing traditions and the years of apprenticeship Jin completed there. Nova also produces a variety of beers labeled Ginjo 7, brewed with sake yeasts and other complementary ingredients such as sansho pepper, oolong tea, yuzu, and Okinawan kokuto sugar. Sake brewing involves constant monitoring, and Jin often sleeps in the brewery, just as a concerned parent might snooze beside their feverish child.

Sake makers in California aren’t confined to the San Francisco Bay Area and its surroundings—Los Angeles also features several younger brewers who are leading the craft sake movement and educating drinkers and diners alike on the beverage’s history and versatility. Founded in 2019, Sawtelle Sake’s name alludes to the rich history of Japanese American community and businesses that established themselves along Sawtelle Boulevard in the Westside region of LA since post-World War II resettlement. For the past few years, the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco’s Japantown has hosted Sake Day, the largest celebration of its kind outside of Japan. The event was founded in 2004 by Beau Timken, the owner of America’s first sake store, True Sake in San Francisco.

The more you polish away, the more what you end up with is pure starch. If you are experiencing difficulties with any content on our website because of a disability, or if you require assistance with any part of our site because of your particular disability, please contact us and let us know. If you are having difficulty with access to our website even after utilizing any access features within this website and/or any third party or browser features, we invite you to contact us for further assistance.