The May 31, 2013 issue of
Wine Spectator is curious for several reasons (aside from being published a month in advance). First, the meat and potatoes of this issue revolves around sushi and sake. It is not unusual for Wine Spectator to feature stories on food or specific types of wine, but the focus on
Nihonshu (sake is actually the general Japanese term for alcoholic beverage and 日本酒 is the fermented rice beverage referred to as sake in English) is interesting and applauded. Having lived in Japan for one year almost eight years ago, I am probably more interested in Japanese food and beverages than the average wine drinker. Harvey Steiman wrote an interesting piece on sushi master Jiro Ono, who was the subject of the recent documentary,
Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Kim Marcus and Mitch Frank each added stories on
Nihonshu. It was in Marcus' story that the second curious issue arose.
In "Cracking the Sake Code," Marcus does a great job of describing how sake is made and defining the various terms used to describe it. However, one thing missing was the
terroir of sake. Just as with wine, the regional differences of sake are both clearly defined and endlessly argued in Japan. Sake from Kyoto, Niigata and Yamagata are all very different; not because of the soils or climate, but because of the water, yeast and rice varieties used. Geography matters, but that isn't made apparent in the article. In fact, Marcus actually suggests that rice and water aren't usually locally sourced and the source doesn't matter. It would have been nice to see the geography of sake addressed with something approaching the effort they do for wine. Yet, that wasn't the impetus for this post.
 |
| What's missing? |
The most striking thing missing from Marcus' story was Wine Spectator 100-point scale. Instead of numerical scores, Marcus, along with Bruce Sanderson, blind tasted the sake and used descriptive categories (words, not points) to reflect how highly they regarded each sake relative to other sake in different categories. Does 92 points describe something that "outstanding" does not? Do you gain more information knowing a wine rates 88 points as opposed to "very good?" As the precise score of a wine varies palate to palate, I think categories are in fact more useful. I think the method was more effective at describing the sake than if they had used points, but I clearly am not an advocate of the 100-pt system. Is this a hint that Wine Spectator is moving away from numerical scores? If sake doesn't need scores, then why does wine?
