In service to sake
The recent Saké Sommelier of the year 2019 competition held in malaysia was a real eye-opener indeed.
CAN you tell a honjozo sake from a junmai ginjo? Would you know which sake to pair with a nasi lemak? Can you choose a suitable vessel to serve a junmai daiginjo?
These were some of the questions posed to a group of six sake sommeliers from Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States, who went head to head at the recent Saké Sommelier of the Year 2019 competition.
Wait... isn’t sake Japanese? Then why aren’t there any Japanese sake sommeliers on the list?
Well, the competition is organised by the London-based Saké Sommelier Association (SSA), which is the first organisation based outside of Japan that is solely committed to sake education and promotion worldwide.
Co-founded in 2000 by Kumiko Ohta and Xavier Chapelou, the SSA objective is to increase the global awareness of sake through education and connectint sake enthusiasts and breweries both inside and outside of Japan.
With that in mind, the SSA offers sake courses for beginners and professionals in over 20 cities and is the only organisation offering the Sake Sommelier qualification outside of Japan.
The Saké Sommelier of the Year competition is also the first of its kind to be held outside of Japan, and this year’s edition was held at The Sake Place at Desa Park City, Kuala Lumpur, the first time ever that it is organised outside of London.
The Sake Place is a restaurant that specialises in pairing sake with different cuisines, particularly Malaysian food. According to its founder Danny Leong, who is also a master Sake sommelier, the reason he offered to organise the competition here was to create more awareness among Malaysians about saké as an internationally-renowned beverage that can be enjoyed just like wines.
Leong was also one of the judges for this year’s competition, together with the two SSA co-founders, Malaysian saké educator and principal of Entwine Consultancy Thomas Ling and Joshua Kalinan, last year’s Sake Sommelier of the Year.
The competition itself consisted of four parts – a written exam, a blind taste test, a food pairing test, and finally, a service test that judges the participants on how they serve the sake.
I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to witness the competition (yes, the participants not only have to ‘perform’ in front of the judges, but also in front of an actual audience!), and managed to catch the taste and food pairing tests.
For the first, each participant was given six unmarked sakes to evaluate and they have to describe and name the type of sake and where it is from, all within 10 minutes. I was told that one of the sakes had even been left out in the open to oxidise before being served, just to throw the competitors a curveball!
The second challenge was the most interesting though. The competitors had to pair three vastly different foods with a sake, namely a lightly torched mackerel, nasi lemak kosong, and blue cheese. Blue cheese is a common enough pairing with wine, so it makes sense that it would go with sake, while the torched mackerel is a Japanesestyled food, but nasi lemak? How do you pair sake with nasi lemak?
Quite well, apparently. Many of the competitors went straight for the sambal paste, as it is the most flavourful component of nasi lemak, and chose a sake that would pair with its spiciness. While we didn’t get to taste their food pairings, it was still fascinating to see the entire process.
In the end, the title of Saké Sommelier of the Year went to Brett Goss, associate at Saké Central Hong Kong, with Singapore’s Matthew Chan Zixing, beverage director at Nouri Restaurant, finishing second and also winning the Sake Sommelier Founders Prize.
This being the first time I had even heard of a competition for sake sommeliers, the event was quite an eye-opener for me, and showed me that I still have a lot to learn about sake. Now, if only there was a place where I can learn more about it, and hopefully drink more of it too...