348-year-old sake brewery’s newest creation: A special sake just to drink with ramen

There’s room for debate as to whether or not it’s accurate to refer to sake as rice “wine,” since it’s actually brewed in a process more similar to how beer is made. That said, sake does have a culinary similarity to wine in that many connoisseurs believe good sake becomes even more delicious when it’s paired with food so that their flavors can complement one another.

So that got Daiichi Shuzo Kaika, a sake maker in Tochigi Prefecture that’s been in business for 348 years, thinking. Sano, the town where Kaika’s brewery is located, has a lot of ramen restaurants, so why not create a sake specifically to be paired with ramen?

And so Noodle Sake Haruka Akifuyu was born. Well, technically the special sake’s birthday was last summer, when a limited-quantity batch went on sale. That sold out pretty quickly, though, and in light of its popularity Kaika has now put it into regular production, with the ramen sake now on full-time sale as of October 1.

Kaika says that Noodle Sake Haruka Akifuyu has a crisp, clean flavor, which should let it play nicely with the more powerful seasonings found in a bowl of ramen. The sake was developed in cooperation with ramen critic Satoko Morimoto, who knows a thing or two about ramen as she reportedly eats about 600 bowls of it a year.

For its summer batch, Noodle Sake Haruka Akifuyu was only available in large bottles, but Kaika is now offering it in “cup sake” size, of 180 milliliters, just enough for one person to fully enjoy in a single sitting with a bowl of ramen, and very affordably priced at 396 yen.

▼ Written on the glass are “Good sake” and “Good ramen,” with the unspoken understanding that if you have those two there’s no need to explicitly state the obvious “Good life” part of the equation.

It’s worth noting that while Japanese food and beverage companies sometimes come up with some pretty unusual limited-time novelty flavors, Kaika’s intent with this sake isn’t just to get a chuckle and a one-time-only purchase from customers. “We want this to become a sake that ramen restaurants around the world will serve, as a matter of course, five, or even 100, years from now,” and if you want to get in at the starting point of that aspired-to history, Noodle Sake Haruka Akifuyu can be ordered online from Kaika here.

Source: PR Times via IT Media

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