A CHARMING LIFE
God I love sake but it wasn’t love at first sight.
My relationship with sake started 16 years ago when I was living in Hokkaido, the stunning
northern island of Japan. It was a pretty typical first encounter: rough, piping hot and - seemingly
- coupled with an alcoholic punch that imprinted only fear on the remaining fragments of my
memory. “God this is terrible!” I thought.
Since that awkward and painful first date, our relationship - mine and sake’s - has gone through
a reawakening (tentative at first), muddled re-acquaintance (drunken but surprisingly hangover
free), rapid appreciation (mutual, I hope) and, finally, a full-on, wondrous love affair. We’ve been
in the honeymoon period for 10 over years now.
Marriage crept in - I started my own sake import company - and the relationship grew and
deepened. I have spent a lot of time studying sake and, for me, the more I learnt the more respect
and understanding I developed for both the drink and the people that work hard to make it. But I
longed to experience making sake myself, to really get an inside appreciation of what it involved,
more than just that