SPC Alumnae NL August-September 09

03Sep09

The Sake Professional Course Alumnae Newsletter

A Medium To Keep in Touch – For the Sake of Sake
August / September 2009

Early Autumn Greetings to all,
Greetings to all SPC graduates, where ever you might be. Apologies for not getting out a mid-August newsletter. I was on the road and it ended up simply being infeasible. As such, this August-September issue is a bit heavy on content (read: longish), but I will try to present it in as skim-able for as I can.

This is the fifth monthly installment of the SPC Alumnae Newsletter. As usual, this will be posted on the blog as well at spcgrad.wordpress.com/.

Warm regards,
John

Announcements
Sake Professional Course New York, July 09
Thanks to the support of many, SPCNY09 was successfully pulled off this past July. Astor Wines and Spirits proved to be a joy to work with, and the venue was great as well. Just about 50 took the course and almost all took the subsequent exam. Almost all passed that. For a list of names of those graduates, please go here. For those interested in reading testimonials from the course and past courses, whether that be to read your own or to use as reference for others, those can be found here.

Facebook
Note, there is a Sake Professional Course Graduate group on Facebook for those of you that are interested. I do think that some members have discussed and shared employment information, so if you are seeking sake-related work it may behoove you to at least sign up for that.

Sake Professional Course Las Vegas
On November 2, 3 and 4 in Las Vegas, Nevada at the MGM Grand Hotel I will hold the second Stateside Sake Professional Course of 2009. This is the first time I will hold more than one a year outside of Japan, and the first one to be held ever in Las Vegas. The MGM Grand is also offering discounted room rates for November 1 to 4 for attendees. If anyone you know or work with is interested in taking the course, by all means please have them email me at sakecoursestateside@sake-world.com. The cost for the three-day course is US$775, and includes certification testing as well. More information can be found at http://www.sake-world.com/html/spclv.html. It is, as you know, simply the best and most thorough sake education on the planet, during which no sake stone remains left unturned.

Hase Toji (r) and the equally famous Noguchi Toji (l)

Level I Sake Specialist Exam
Note, at the end of the course in Las Vegas, I will be offering the Level I exam. If any graduates of SPCI would like to take the test at that time you are welcome to do so. If you are interested in this or have any questions related to it please feel free to contact me at the above address or at sakeguy@gol.com.

Sake Professional Course in Japan, 2010
The Japan-based version of the Sake Professional Course will be held January 25 to 30 in Japan. The fee is 170,000 yen (about US$1700) and includes the three days of seminar content, plus two days of brewery visits to four kura of different scale, and note too that the evening meals (and tons of sake along with them) are included in the tuition as well. I have not yet announced this seminar to the public, but have four or five attendees already, and attendance will be strictly limited to 20. If you or yours are interested, please let me know as soon as you can.

SPCII 2010: Level II of the Sake Professional Courses PLEASE NOTE!
Following that, during the week of February 15, 2010, I will hold SPCII 2010 in Japan as well. SPCII builds on the “no sake stone left unturned” foundation of Level I, and focuses on advanced material, lots of tasting exercise designed to hone and improve your tasting and recognition skills, and also includes two guest lectures by Haruo Matsuzaki (“the sake palate from hell”) on regionality and how to improve your tasting skills, and one more on the economics of sake vs. those of wine. Naturally, evening meals and kura visits are a part of the experience too, although for SPCII we stay in Tokyo and branch out to day-trip-distance kura from there. SPCII finishes with the Level II (Intermediate) Sake Specialist exam, which includes essays and a tasting component and is significantly more challenging than Level I. The cost for Level II is 150,000 yen.

Note, there has been a large show of initial interest in Level II already, and I can only handle 20 participants. As such, a chance exists that I will do a second Level II here in March, but I am not sure if that is needed or feasible yet. As such, if you are interested in taking Level II here in Japan, please do take a moment to let me know. It is not a commitment on your part yet, but I need to know if I need to think about setting up a second Level II course as well. I would greatly appreciate your help and support on this. Thanks in advance.

The Sake Executive Council
Thanks to the support of many I am actively putting together the legal entity that will be the non-profit organization The Sake Education Council, and in fact hope to have something to report to you in a month. Please keep posted.
News from the Sake World
“Sake Briefs”

H20BY Sake Shipments Down 6%
Sake shipments for the H20BY were down by 6 percent. Surely you recall that BY means brewing year, i.e. July 1 of one year to June 30 of the next (so as to catch all brewers and brew for one season, no matter how early in the fall they start or late in the spring they finish). H refers to Heisei, the current era based on the Emperor, and 20 is of course the year of that reign. So it really means sake shipped between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. But I bet you knew that.

Regardless, it was down 6 percent. Having said that, shipments for July 2009 were down less than 2 percent of those of one year earlier. And on a much, much brighter note (we can use more of  those…) sake is starting to really resurge in comparison to shochu, Japan’s distilled beverage, which has begun its long foretold and anticipated contraction. (I heard from a local specialty liquor shop that several shochu places are not even brewing this year because their tanks for full still of shochu from last year.) While I certainly wish no ill toward any producer of any alcohol, I must say I am pleased to see sake start to make some progress. Note, though, it is not much, and the industry has a long, long way to go. “We are not out of the woods yet,” and in fact, not even close.

Largest Ten Brewers Fared Well
The largest ten brewers, a list that includes Hakutsuru, Gekkeikan, Takara (Shochikubai), Ozeki, Kizakura, Nihonzakari, Kikumasamune and three others, shipped 98% of what they shipped the previous year, at least as a collective group. This I found surprising since what is contracting the fastest is futsuu-shu, and these companies make the most of that kind of sake. But it seems that their overall quality at any level, compared with indefatigable ability to keep prices low through economies of scale, is helping them win that battle in the trenches, presumably at the expense of smaller brewers’ futsuu-shu. Another article came out and said that, overall, the larger brewing companies overall fared better than the smaller ones economically last year.

As usual, we swim in a quagmire of statistics, but the above points seemed interesting to me.

Gekkeikan in the US Celebrates 20 Years
Gekkeikan’s US based brewery celebrated 20 years of operation in the US, according to another article in one of the industry rags I skim. Last year, they produced 4000 kl in their 5000 kl capacity brewery, and in fact plan to invest in more equipment raising the yearly capacity to 6000 kl.

Shokichi Hase, long time toji at Kaiun in Shizuoka, Passes Away
The toji at Doi Shuzo in Shizuoka since 1968, and known as one of the Four Guardians of Heaven of the Noto Toji, (Noto Toji no Shiten-oh), Shokichi Hase passed away on July 17. That is forty seasons as a toji – all at one kura. He helped make Kaiun and Takatenjin what they are, and was surely one of the most famous toji in the history of the craft. I am quite sure he took steps to see that the brew maintained its quality after he was gone. May he rest in peace, and may the Doi family and their sake not feel his absence too much.

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