We stopped by the Nihonshu Fair at Sunshine City (Ikebukuro) yesterday. Tasting our way around the shuppinshu special contest brews was educational, occasionally uplifting and eventually palate- numbing. So we moved along to the upper floor where the tasting/retail fair was being held.
It wasn't as massively overcrowded as we'd feared, nor as boisterous — not until the end, at any rate. But there were still plenty of punters crowded around the most popular booths, such as Tochigi...
Shimane...
Obviously there was no avoiding the situation in Tohoku, especially the damage to kura in the quake/tsunami zone.
But even Miyagi was able to balance its pictures of the destruction with its own manga mascot (she's affectionately known as Sugitama-chan, I believe).
While some of the brewers were serious, by the end of the evening, many looked like they'd been sampling plenty of their own wares...
Among punters, dress styles ranged from the traditional... to the unconventional (this on the right was the Osaka booth, which could explain a lot).
Not all the experts in attendance were Japanese...
In the end, the booth we spent the longest was the one run by the Institute of Long Term Aging Sake. That's probably because long-term aging is something that's becoming increasingly appealing to us.
It's a sake industry group set up by kura who are focusing on koshu (aged sake). Their offerings ranged from virtually transparent and lightly acidic to deep amber with massively rich sweet flavours...
Here are a few more we sampled. A lovely light, clean, well-balanced 6-year-old brew from Nambu-bijin (Iwate); a special 2011 vintage from Kaetsu (Niigata), which you buy, take home and leave to mature for a decade or two...
...and the 7-year-old Kijonenpu from Hanagaki (Fukui), which is produced by a double-brewing process, meaning that sake is used instead of water in the moromi tanks, generating a massive sweetness to rival the most unctuous of PX sherries.
After all that imbibing, we needed to eat. So we went off for nibbles — and some more sake — at Uraya. More about that in a future post...
