Season 1. Episode 36. Shoe leather? Starfruit? Pheasant Skin? Have you ever heard a – let’s say – “advanced” sake aroma or taste description that left you feeling a little bit lost? What if you feel like you’re not picking up on the nuance or subtlety in sake? That is exactly the question one of our listeners asked us by email.

In this episode, John and Tim break down the process of tasting sake – Tasting with intention to study the main points of a sake. That would be the appearance in the glass, aroma, palate/taste and finish. We talk about each step in detail and what to do if you might be lacking the vocabulary to express what you’re tasting. Also, we’ll review some tips and tricks to study aromas and flavors. In the end, the art of studying sake tasting is about enjoying sake tasting. Learn as little or as much about tasting as interests you and helps you find a sake you love.

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Skip to: 00:19 Hosts Welcome and Introduction
Welcome to the show from John and Timothy

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Skip to: 01:28 Sake Education Corner: How To Taste Sake

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Skip to: 03:05 Sake Tasting Introductions

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Skip to: 9:52 Sake Tasting: Gokyo Hiyaoroshi Namazume Junmai

Gokyo Hiyaoroshi Namzume Junmai

Acidity: 1.9
Brewery: Sakai Shuzo
SMV: +2.0
Seimaibuai: 60%
Classification: Hiyaoroshi, Junmai, Namazume
Prefecture: Yamaguchi
Alcohol: 15.0%
Brand: Gokyo
Rice Type: Nihonbare, Yamadanishiki
Sake Name English: Five Bridges
Yeast: 9E

View On UrbanSake.com

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Skip to: 13:30 Sake Tasting: Katsuyama Ken Junmai Ginjo

Katsuyama Ken Junmai Ginjo

Seimaibuai: 50%
SMV: +3.0
Rice Type: Yamadanishiki
Prefecture: Miyagi
Alcohol: 15.0%
Classification: Junmai Ginjo
Acidity: 1.6
Brewery: Katsuyama Shuzo

View On UrbanSake.com

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Skip to: 31:46 Show Closing

This is it! Join us next time for another episode of Sake Revolution!

John Puma: 0:22
Hello. Hi and welcome to sake revolution. This is America’s first sake podcast. I’m your host, John Puma from the sake notes. Also the administrator over at the internet, a discord as well as Reddit’s r/sake community. But I’m just a sake nerd at heart. Just like you guys.

Timothy Sullivan: 0:42
And I’m your host Timothy Sullivan. I am a sake samurai. I am a sake educator, as well as the founder of the Urban Sake website and together John and I will be tasting and chatting about all things, sake and doing our best to make it fun and easy to understand.

John Puma: 0:58
Hmm, Tim, you know what we haven’t done in a little while? You know, where we haven’t gone in a little while?

Timothy Sullivan: 1:04
Hm. I know we we’ve been in the tasting foyer, many, many times recently.

John Puma: 1:09
Yes. Well, I mean it tasting foyer is, uh, is life, but, we have not done a stroll into the sake education corner. And this week we have a little bit of a request from one of our listeners.

Timothy Sullivan: 1:25
All right. Well, let’s go.

John Puma: 1:28
All right. So time to go over to the sake education corner and Tim. I think that what we’re going to be talking about today is going to help out a lot of our listeners. And it’s also going to help out your cohost a whole lot, because I do struggle with this. And that is, we’ve been tasked by one of our listeners. To talk about how they could refine their palate and pick up the subtleties a little bit better when they’re tasting sake.

Timothy Sullivan: 1:51
This is a question that I get a lot as a sake teacher. And it’s especially common among people who primarily drink beer or drink wine or drink some other beverage when they come over to sake and start sipping sake for the first time, I often hear from people that they feel like they’re missing out on the subtleties, or they can’t get the nuance of sake. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. How to really focus in on some of the nuance and subtleties and sake and what you want to look for when you’re tasting.

John Puma: 2:24
All right. Well, I’m settled in, I’m ready to learn.

Timothy Sullivan: 2:28
All right. Well, what I think if we’re going to talk about tasting, then we have to have some sake in our glass. So why don’t we, introduce the sakes that we’ve each brought today. And then as we taste them, we can go through it. Step-by-step and I’ll let you know what I usually do when I’m tasting sake and what we can, some kind of tricks of the trade to learn about how to do tasting a little bit more intently.

John Puma: 2:54
So we’re jumping straight to the sake.

Timothy Sullivan: 2:56
Yes, we

John Puma: 2:57
This is a wonderful episode. we should do listen to request more often.

Timothy Sullivan: 3:02
All right. Well, John, what did you bring today to taste with

John Puma: 3:05
Uh, today, I brought a sake from a, uh, a brand that I’ve been kind of, I mean, kind of a big fan of for a while. And I think a lot of people have, maybe slept on them a little bit. So I want to cut them out there. Let’s see the name of the brand is a Gokyo, and this is actually, their hiyaoroshi, junmai and being a hiyaoroshi. is a namazume and you guys can go back to our Hiyaoroshi episode to get all the details on what all that means. But, it’s a, brewery that’s located in Yamaguchi. Uh, Yamaguchi is very famous for being the home of one of the most popular Asahi Shuzos that being the one that makes Dassai,

Timothy Sullivan: 3:53
all right.

John Puma: 3:54
and what about you, Tim? What’d you bring.

Timothy Sullivan: 3:56
Well, I have a very delicious kind of luxury sake today. I have Katsuyama Ken, its a Junmai Ginjo and it is a 50% rice milling rate. This is a brewery Katsuyama, a well-known brewery from Miyagi, and they’re located in Sendai city there. And, uh, primarily uses Yamada Nishiki. And I’m really excited. I haven’t had this sake in a while and I thought it might be a good example to bring out when we talk about the subtleties of tasting. So that’s why I picked this one out.

John Puma: 4:30
Very nice. I’m excited.

Timothy Sullivan: 4:31
Yeah. So the first thing we want to, uh, approach is the glass that we’re using and you get this question a lot. What should I use my recommendation if you’re starting to taste sake is just picking a white wine glass, which everyone’s going to have at home. Any type of wine glass is fine. STEM, no STEM. Doesn’t matter. And you just want something with a little bit of a bowl to it. And that bowl allows us to isolate some of the aromas and, smell the sake a little bit easier. So that’s our tool. Our weapon of choice for today is just grabbed the closest wineglass to you. And let’s go ahead and open our bottles. So, John, why don’t you go first?

John Puma: 5:09
All right. So this, Gokyo, hiyaoroshi uses, Nihonbare and Yamana nishiki rice. The Seimaibuai is 60%. And that Seimaibuai is the milling percentage. the sake meter value is plus two. So this is pretty neutral. And the alcohol percentage is 15 and a half.

Timothy Sullivan: 5:42
all right, so I’m going to go ahead and open up my Katsuyama and give this a pour as well. Okay. So John, once you get the sake in the glass, the next thing you want to do is look at the color. And if you have a tablecloth or a table cover, that’s a white background. That’s ideal. That’s what you would use in an official kind of tasting capacity. Uh, but sometimes I just take a sheet of white paper and just hold it against the glass, hold it behind the glass. And you want to see how much color your sake has. Now. Some people laugh and say, isn’t all sake, perfectly clear. Sake can have all different shades of color from perfectly clear, like water to a little hints of green. You can get hints of yellow. You can get brownish, uh, darker caramelized colors as well. Some sakes use a red rice. You can get pink notes in there. So there’s a wide range of colors you can get with sake. So the first thing you want to do is just assess the color and see how much. Color you have there, if you see hints of yellow or darkening, that might be hints that the sake might have some age to it. So that’s something you just want to keep an eye on as well. Then once you’ve assessed the color, you want to move on to smell the sake, and this is easy. So you just take your glass, you may want to give it a very gentle swirl. Sometimes I’ve taught some classes and people get very aggressive with their swirling and the sake goes flying everywhere. We want to avoid that,

John Puma: 7:20
That sounds like a good time.

Timothy Sullivan: 7:21
yeah, just a very gentle swirl. And if you have a stemmed wineglass, you can put the STEM on the table. And just move it in a circular motion and that’s all you really need to do. Or you can pick up the STEM as well and just give it a very gentle swirl. And what this does is it activates the aroma compounds that are on the surface of the sake and they kind of lift off the surface and that allows us to smell them. So go ahead and give it a smell.

John Puma: 7:47
Oh, wow. so, so lacking a white piece of paper. I’m actually holding my glass up against, uh, my screen. And I have an empty notepad, uh, on my monitor. This is, this is sake tasting for the 21st century. and especially on zoom, we’re always in front of the computer. Very easy to do that. And I can see that there’s a slight tinge of yellow in my Gokyo. hiyaoroshi, not a, not a tremendous amount, but that makes perfect sense because this is a HIA Roshi. And that means that this was purposefully sitting for several months before it was bottled.

Timothy Sullivan: 8:24
Yeah. And th the other thing that a little bit of color can mean is that it could be no charcoal filtering. So a lot of sakes are charcoal filtered, and that makes them exceedingly like sparkly diamond, crystal clear. And if you skip that charcoal filtering step or do less aggressive charcoal filtering, you can get. Little bits of, color, little bits of sediment that are not visible to the eye, but they give you a little bit of a hint of color in there as well. That’s something to be aware of., once you’ve given your glass a very gentle swirl, just take the glass to your nose and, give it a little sniff.

John Puma: 9:03
Oh, wow. There’s a lot of aroma on this.

Timothy Sullivan: 9:07
Now, when it comes to. Recognizing aromas. And our viewer question was about picking up on the subtleties, you know, and my advice. The next time you go to the grocery store and you’re in the produce section, pick up that orange, pick up that lemon, give it a smell and really smell the produce and the flowers. And if you smell them with intention, To remember the aroma. One of the best connections we have in our brain is the memory of aromatics. So if you do very intentionally smell things, you can keep that as a memory bank and refer to that when you are tasting and smelling sake in the future. So what aroma are you picking up on John in your, in your Hiyaoroshi from Gokyo?

John Puma: 9:56
Well, if, if I bring my nose kind of into the glass, Then I get a lot of fruit and then some like, like, so I want to say honeydew, but maybe a little bit sweeter and not, not quite cantaloupe, but, but specifically honeydew, just a little bit sweeter.

Timothy Sullivan: 10:16
somewhere in the Melon

John Puma: 10:18
Somewhere in the melon range, but I think it’s, it’s, you know, how, when fruit is kind of, uh, it’s, over-riping a little bit, it gets a little bit sweeter. That’s something that in my head I usually associate with, uh, associated with cantaloupe, especially cause that really gets a lot of, a lot of aroma when it starts to overripe it, but it’s kind of where I imagine honeydew to be in that case. I ended up as the produce isle are often, clearly,

Timothy Sullivan: 10:43
yes.

John Puma: 10:44
then I have another, another thing that if I just bring it near my nose and don’t really

Timothy Sullivan: 10:51
Hm.

John Puma: 10:52
put my nose over the glass, much more of a much more cherry.

Timothy Sullivan: 10:58
Oh, interesting.

John Puma: 10:59
Yeah. It’s a little different and it’s probably related to the shape of the glass and things of that nature, but yeah, really nice. This is, there’s a lot of aroma here. It’s very aromatic sake

Timothy Sullivan: 11:12
Yeah, well, interesting. You know, one way that we assess the intensity of a sake we talk about how intense or how bold the aroma is. We really do assess how close to our nose do we need to get before we smell something. Sometimes you can smell a sake when someone opens the bottle across the room, and sometimes you really need to stick your nose, literally into the glass to smell something. Some sakes have super restrained aromas, and you can be anywhere in between. So if you hold the class six inches away from your nose, give it a little swirl and you can get some aromas that’s, a pretty. Noticeable aroma. And if you move it a little bit closer, you can get more. And depending on how bold the aroma is from further away, that’s one way we assess the impact of aromatics. And I have another trick for people who may be unsure of the nuance of their aroma. you can take your wineglass and. Put your clean hand, your Palm over the, entire top of the glass. So your sealing, the glass shut with the Palm of your hand, and then you gently give it a swirl. And what you’re doing is you’re activating and trapping those esters, those aromatic compounds in the glass. And then when you remove your hand,

John Puma: 12:31
Look at that.

Timothy Sullivan: 12:33
you get a concentrated punch of the aroma for sakes that are very aromatic. You don’t need to do this trick, but if you have a sake that has a very light aroma, and you’re trying to, goose up the aroma a little bit to focus in on what it might be, covering the glass, giving it a swirl, and then you get a concentrated punch. Did you notice that when you did that John

John Puma: 12:55
I did. I did. And I also found that’s an excellent way to get sake on your hands.

Timothy Sullivan: 13:01
You were swirling aggressively.

John Puma: 13:03
I was, I was swirling aggressively it’s so I know how to swirl my right hand really well, uh, without, without doing that. And for whatever reason, I put my right hand on top of the glass and used my left hand for swirling far less adept.

Timothy Sullivan: 13:19
things went sideways very quickly with you. Yes.

John Puma: 13:21
while I’m drying the sake off my hands, Tim, why don’t you tell us what your aroma is? don’t want you to miss out since you’re proctoring this entire lesson.

Timothy Sullivan: 13:30
Well, again, I have the katsuyama Ken Junmai Ginjo And this brand is very well known for being a luxury brand. And this aroma lives up to that very much. I’m getting Rose. And I’m getting a very delicious fruits. This smells very delicious and it smells very rich and, I also smell melon, but it is not simple plain Melon. There are many layers to the fruitiness going on here. So there’s, MUSCAT, there’s a Kiwi. It’s, the depth that is so enchanting with this sake There’s so much aroma that. The, the layers are so much fun to dig into. You can talk for a long time about all the different layers. And that’s one of the signs of a real quality sake is the complexity that they can bring to that fruity aroma. And we’re really getting that here.

John Puma: 14:31
Very nice. So what’s next.

Timothy Sullivan: 14:35
All right. So once we’ve had a smell, a sniffy sniff, it is time to take a sippy sip. So let’s go ahead and give it a taste. Now, John, I’m sure you’ve seen on TV and movies. People who take a sip of wine. And then they do this whole like slurping thing and pull air over their palate. And people ask me often if they have to do the wine tasting tricks in order to truly appreciate the sake And I say, you can, if you want to, if it makes you feel better, but your palate is perfectly capable of tasting the aroma without doing any of those gymnastics in your mouth. So. I say, just take a sip. I hold it on my palate for a little bit. And sometimes I even make like, with my mouth closed, I make like a little bit of a chewing, chewing motion to spread the sake out on my palate and then swallow. Or if you’re doing a professional tasting, you, you can spit. But, that spreads the sake across the entire palate. And a lot of the flavors that we are taking in from tasting sake actually come up through the nose. So we do a lot of our perception of flavor and taste through aromatics as well. Once we are swallowing the sake as well. So what are, what are you picking up for flavors on your sake

John Puma: 16:00
Well, all right. So. there is a nice plush fruitiness uh, this is coating the mouth. So we talk a little bit about a mouthfeel sometimes. Uh, and this is definitely something that’s all over. I put down my glass a few moments ago and I’m still. Tasting it it’s still resonating. It’s still active because it just gets everywhere and it kind of stays for a little bit. Uh, and that’s, I find that very pleasant, especially when I can pair that idea with something that’s nice and fruity, and just really, really pleasant like that. I think we talked about some, almost one of our very first episodes that I really love when I get something it’s very fruity and lingers, and this is lingering. And it is nice and fruity, but, at the same time it is hiyaoroshi. So it does, it does come across a little, autumnal and is just a really, really nice, really pleasant well-balanced as a freshness to it. It’s really nice. And I, I realize I’m expressing more emotions about what does this make me feel? and that’s because sometimes I have a hard time with turning that into, into flavor description, into like a, into, you know, This particular vegetable or what have you. And so what, the way I compensate sometimes is big is kind of giving you, the emotional reaction, which is sometimes, uh, sometimes it’s useful. I find, uh, when trying to describe tastes,

Timothy Sullivan: 17:43
yeah. You know, it might be worthwhile to just take one moment and reflect on why we want to do this. Like, why did our listener want to know. About the subtleties of tasting the, when it gets down to brass tacks, really it’s about enjoyment. And I think what you just said about talking about how it makes you feel is really important. You don’t need to know what star fruit versus leechy what the difference in that taste is. If you enjoy it and you enjoy tasting it, the only reason in my book to keep detailed notes is to remember. Which sake is you enjoyed, so you can enjoy them in the future. I really encourage people not to get too hung up on thinking that they’re losing out. If they’re not picking up on a certain aroma or flavor that somebody else said they had in a certain sake if you’re enjoying it, that’s really the most important thing.

John Puma: 18:48
and I think that when you’re talking about how something tastes, you need to draw on foods. You’ve eaten. And not everybody has grown up eating the same food. So a lot of people don’t have a frame of reference for a lot of these things, I’ve had, I’ve read tasting notes, that said like, uh, Oh, flavors, of like pheasant skin. I don’t know what that means. Uh, I have never had pheasant skin. I don’t imagine I will anytime soon, so that would be a little bit lost on me, but that’s because that other person that’s an experience. They had that they felt really matched in with what they were tasting and that is very valid for them and very useful for them.

Timothy Sullivan: 19:31
right. And you really have to have a reality check and say like, if you don’t smell shoe-leather or pheasant skin, or like, you know, Dale tobacco or something in your sake or your wine, that’s totally fine. That’s not really what we as consumers need to worry ourselves with too much. But if you do take the time to study a sake and if you do read a note that says, Oh, I get honeydew melon, or I get Muscat grape, or I get. Uh, yeasty notes or bread notes or rice or toasted rice, or, you know, any of them, these different things. It’s a fun experiment. And I think it’s worthwhile next time. You’re steaming a batch of rice or you’re making rice for dinner, just open up that rice maker, open up that, that pot and give it a good intention, driven smell, and really pay attention to the aroma. And the next time you’re drinking sake that will really serve you very well.

John Puma: 20:28
Yeah, so it seems like the more. Things you get exposed to the more Aromas, the more flavors you get exposed to so long as you’re paying attention at the time, you’re going to intrinsically expand your ability to describe what you’re smelling and tasting.

Timothy Sullivan: 20:45
absolutely. And again, the purpose of all of this is really for your own enjoyment. So don’t get hung up on because 99% of us are not going to be. Professional tasters or need this in a professional capacity. We really want to remember what sakes we enjoyed what we enjoyed about it. And if you discover a new flavor through tasting a sake that’s really great. So, you know, you just got to celebrate that. So now I’m going to taste my Katsuyama and give this a little bit of a, a taste. Now we had this very luxurious, fruity, very deep aroma, and we’re going to give it a taste. Okay. The texture is velvety, very rich, layered, exceedingly smooth. So when you talk about smoothness in a sake that’s really how it goes down. The texture of it. Some sakes have a little bit of a rough texture to them. Maybe a little bit prominent alcohol flavor. But other sakes like this katsuyama are very silky, very velvety. They go down smooth and there’s a concentrated tropical taste here. So I’m getting papaya, I’m getting mango, I’m getting a little bit of pineapple and melon. So it is a symphony of fruity concentrated flavors that is really luxurious and really special. You’ve had this sake before,

John Puma: 22:14
I have, I have, I have the pleasure of visiting, that brewery is in Katsuyama brewery. I

Timothy Sullivan: 22:23
what?

John Puma: 22:24
well, you see, we got friendly with the daughter of the kuramoto when she was in New York, and when we, we were having a conversation and told her that we were going to be in Tokyo for our honeymoon, and she insisted that we visit the brewery. And, When somebody invites you to their brewery on your honeymoon, you go. So we did. And it was actually my first brewery visit.

Timothy Sullivan: 22:53
Really is that so.

John Puma: 22:56
it was, it was our first very, very first brewery visit it was the first time that we had ever been to Sendai and it was a beautiful city. Yeah, lovely area. And the brewery was absolutely wonderful. It was a, such a, great experience being there and kind of see how sake has made in person for the first time.

Timothy Sullivan: 23:20
wow, that’s fantastic. I’ve always wanted to visit their brewery and they’re, they’re very well known for making. a high end, very luxurious sake and just revisiting. This takes me back to so many wonderful memories of having this sake with different, great meals in the past. It’s one of the joys of studying sake I think is kind of reliving those good experiences through revisiting a sake

John Puma: 23:48
Yeah. One of these days, Tim, what I just asked, you know, if you, if you want to go to visit a katsuyama, I know somebody and maybe I can make it happen for you.

Timothy Sullivan: 23:56
You can, you can introduce me.

John Puma: 23:58
Yeah, I can, uh, you know, I can set up an introduction.

Timothy Sullivan: 24:01
Thank you, John. I appreciate that.

John Puma: 24:05
It’s actually, it’s actually a very small brewery, relatively speaking. I know that you you’ve, you’ve spoken about going to very large places you actually spoken about going in very small places too. But, this one, was, In my mind, especially having gone to brewery since is a bit on the smaller side, but that’s like their thing is that they make very small batch, very high quality sake And so everything is very hands-on and people are very specialized and that’s like, that was my major takeaway. And after I went there, I kind of thought that that’s how all sake breweries worked. And then I went to other sake breweries and found that no, no, no, it’s actually a little bit different everywhere. Everybody has their own, their own methodology, their own spin on it. Uh, and it was, it was really, that’s been one of the exciting things for me about visiting breweries is seeing how different places do it, how, how they, uh, Accomplish the same, you know, at the end of the day, you need to accomplish the same things, but how you go about it, uh, is going to be, it’s going to be very different.

Timothy Sullivan: 25:03
You know, John, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this bottle has a giant gold sticker on it. And the Katsuyama was awarded the international wine challenge 2019 world champion award. So the sake that I’m drinking won the top prize at the IWC 2019 sake challenge, uh, the grand champion sake So that can’t be bad. That’s pretty good.

John Puma: 25:32
but it is though. It’s really great. It’s great

Timothy Sullivan: 25:35
it is, Oh, it’s very luxurious. And you know, John, when you were giving your tasting note, you jumped right to the final part of the tasting experience. You talked a lot about the finish of the sake. No, that’s fine. so after you take your sip of sake you want to. Pay attention to how long does the flavor linger on your palate? How long can you taste the sake after you’ve swallowed and how long is the aroma and the flavor lingering there for you? Some sakes are going to disappear very quickly, like sipping on water and some are going to coat your palate and stick around for a long time wine in general. Like a rich red wine is going to tend to coat your palate and really have a long lingering finish. sake can be shorter than that in general. So for the sake that you had, you think there’s a little bit of some staying power there, right?

John Puma: 26:37
yeah, there very much is. And the fun part about that is that. Through, consecutive sips, sometimes it builds a little bit. Uh, and so you kind of get to get to play with that and in a way almost customize your experience because the, the more you sip, the pace that you sip will influence how much of that build happens. It’s really interesting. Like I said, this is like a fruity yet. full bodied. And that’s really, that’s a really great little corner where you can really expand on like the fruitiness of a sake by, by having those repeated steps and having it linger on your palate. It’s really nice.

Timothy Sullivan: 27:23
Yeah. So, so, John, what do you think we talked about assessing the color, assessing the aroma. The palate, the flavor and also the finish. So do you feel a little bit more confident now about going through tasting the sake

John Puma: 27:37
think so. And I think my major takeaway was that I need to, I need to go out and experience things, I need to go out. And, when I’m taking in the aroma of a food, I need to really process that and think about it and not just kind of go, this is chicken, you know, I need to really think about it some more because then I can apply it to other things like sake although probably not so much with the chicken.

Timothy Sullivan: 28:01
but you know, if you, the next time you’re walking by a flower stand or the next time you’re in the produce section of the grocery store, or the next time you’re at the rice cooker, making your rice, you know, you can take a moment and intentionally. And purposefully smell and experience these things and then file them away. And then when you go to enjoy your sake, those experiences will be right there for you to call upon. So that’s, that’s a great lesson for today. I think.

John Puma: 28:30
And remember, I think you, you touched on this earlier and this was something that was very important, too, to my wife and I, when we were first starting to taste sake and, and try to take some notes down, is that whatever you have that you’re able to, to put down, if you want to take notes on the sake tasting and you don’t have the exact fruit or what have you put, whatever it is, that. That’s going to remind you of it, use your own language. And you’re going to be able to reference that later, you know, at the end of the day, these notes are for you. And they’re, if you’re taking notes on sake you, this is for you to reference it for you to remember how something tasted to you. So put things down that make sense to you. Don’t try to match what somebody else who’s been a professional taster for 20 years does the most important thing is that you understand it and it means something to you.

Timothy Sullivan: 29:29
that’s a great point. And I want to mention one other thing is that a lot of the tasting notes that we read are written by a marketing department, you know, they’re not written by an independent. Taster who is giving you an unbiased opinion every time. So when you do read tasting notes online that are produced by the brewer or produced by, the distributor, you have to take it with a grain of salt. And I couldn’t agree more with what you said that you have to use the words that you have, the vocabulary that you have. I had one student in my class once who said she used the system of smiley faces to rate her sake And she, you know, she would fill her notebook with like one smiley face, two smiley faces, three smiley faces. And. I’m sure she might’ve had a few frowny faces in there too, but you know, she, she was completely happy with that way of assessing her sake She didn’t need all the starfruit and Aneese and all that other crazy stuff. So whatever works for you is really important. And if you do study the aromas and smells around you, you will grow your vocabulary for, uh, assessing sake But as we’ve said, it’s all about the enjoyment and what works for

John Puma: 30:43
Yeah. And I think that that’s a really great point that you touched on there. It’s you’re growing your vocabulary. having the vocabulary is not going to change how you experienced the sake It’s going to change how you can explain the sake to somebody else, but your appreciation is not going to be impacted by you knowing that it’s a starfruit at least I don’t. I don’t think so. Maybe after I understand starfruit I’ll, I’ll be able to weigh in more on that.

Timothy Sullivan: 31:12
And you touched on this a moment ago, that everybody’s experience is also different depending on what you grew up eating and drinking and, and experiencing, uh, you may have different points of reference for the same sake and that’s totally fine as well. And, if you enjoyed it and you want to remember it, write down what makes sense to you to recall that experience and then. You can use that in the future to bring back the great sakes that you had a good experience with. That’s what it’s all

John Puma: 31:43
Yeah.

Timothy Sullivan: 31:46
All right. Well, I think we both learned a lot today. This is a really fun episode. I had a lot of fun talking to you about how to taste sake and I hope our listeners enjoyed as well. I want to thank our listeners also so much for tuning in. We really do hope that you’re enjoying our show. If you’d like to show your support for sake revolution, one way you can help us out is to take a couple of minutes and leave a written review on Apple podcasts. It’s one of the best ways for us to get the word out about our show.

John Puma: 32:15
and don’t forget that this is a weekly program. So you’re going to want to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts this way. Every week, when we put out a new episode, it’s going to show up in your device of choice and you turn, you have to do anything to make it happen.

Timothy Sullivan: 32:32
And as always, if you want to learn more about any of the topics or any of the sakes we talked about in today’s episode, just visit our website, SakeRevolution.com for all the detailed show notes.

John Puma: 32:44
and if you have any questions that you need answered, we want to hear from you. And maybe your question can be the next topic on a sake education corner like this one today. So when you have those questions, please reach out to us over [email protected]. So until next time, please remember to keep drinking sake, go find your starfruit and KANPAI

Timothy Sullivan: 33:15
poor starfruit.