“Sake works best with subtleties,” says Roger Dagorn, Master Sommelier and Sake Samurai, and the only person on Earth to be both. We’re on the sixth course of the seminar—dessert, for which he’s paired Hanahato Junmai Kijoshu with a milk chocolate mousse. So far, despite not knowing much about sake, I’ve kept up, but here is where he loses me. This sake is brown: whiskey brown, soy sauce brown, flat root beer brown. Where most sake is brewed with water, Kijoshu sake is brewed with more sake (a method known as shiori). Enoki Shuzo, the Hiroshima-based brewery behind the Hanahato brand, makes their Kijoshu from Senbon Nishiki rice (there are over one hundred kinds of sake rice) and ages it for eight years.
I pick up oxidative scents on the nose, like those of an old sherry: coffee beans, hazelnut syrup, autumn honey. This may be a dessert sake, but I find it mostly dry, with notes of cacao, red bean, and malt barley driving the palate. When it comes to weight, the sake scale operates differently, the gradations less pronounced than in wine, but I’d call this medium-full bodied. I see why Dagorn paired it with chocolate, but Hanahato Kijoshu would also go well with a nice, dirty cigar (the cigar kick continues!), or with a dish that, like this sake, walks the line between sweet and savory: unagi sushi, curry bread, or those porcini mushroom macarons with white truffle mousse from the third course. Damn, those were good.
If you want to check out Hanahato online, just learn Japanese real quick and go to http://hanahato.ocnk.net
gots to love something brewed with more something