Tamagawa Tokubetsu Junmai is a savoury full-bodied sake with a deep taste and silky texture. For me, it tasted sweeter chilled or at room temperature than hot. The sweetness seems to dissolve as you warm the sake up. As many junmai sake, Tamagawa is not particularly aromatic sporting some rice notes and a bit of earthiness. The toji decides on the rice variety," says Cheong-Thong Marie Cheong-Thong, an effervescent sake obsessive who sits on the board for the British Sake Association and judges at the International Wine and Spirits Competition. "He decides on the yeast variety, he decides on how he makes his koji, he decides on the polish of the rice." Different types of sake I know that I have already featured Tamagawa Tokubestu Junmai in one of my articles. But such a great sake, that I couldn’t help just feature it again. And of course, Tamagawa is an ultimate sake for kanzake. Made by the first non-Japanese sake master brewer, Philip Harper, the sake is great at any temperature, but especially when served hot. It was also recommended by Andrew Russell on a podcast episode about yeast. So it’s an amazing sake.

Honjozo Akashi-Tai’s sake is made to be slightly lighter in style than their other types of sake, using high quality rice and a small amount of brewers alcohol to create a crisp, dry and easy to drink sake. For example, the company uses the yamada-nishiki variety of rice — a superior strain — grown in the region just north of Akashi. Brewing superior sake by hand requires all five senses to perfect with the natural processes of fermentation and flavour development. That flavour is dictated by each brewery's toji – the sake master. Unlike wine, where taste is as much about the soil as the choice of grapes and which kind of wood it's aged in, sake is purely about ingredients and technique, rather than terroir.However, when you start heating it up, the profile magically changes. It becomes very mild with dryness and acidity almost going away. The texture gets more buttery and the body – more mouthful. It pairs nicely with any food due to its umami and higher acidity. I had it with a beef stew and at 30-45°C it was the best. With lighter dishes, I would recommend it at a room temperature of even chilled.

Akashi-Tai Tokubestu Junmai is quite pleasant chilled. It has an elegant but subtle aroma with notes of apple, elderflower and rice. The sake is quite acidic and dry with a simple taste, creamy texture and short but pleasant finish. So, let's settle an age-old debate – should you drink sake warm or chilled? Well, it depends. "All sake used to be consumed warm or at room temperature," says Sebastian Lemoine, a Tokyo-based sake expert and teacher at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school. "However, in the post-war period, consumers started to associate warm sake with the drinking experience of cheap, soon industrial, sake, which was required to feed a booming market." This cookie is set by Rubicon Project to control synchronization of user identification and exchange of user data between various ad services. The company incorporated in 1918, after which it made the most of a geographic location ideal for making fine sake. In brewing its select sakes, Akashi Sake Brewery uses only the choicest ingredients, often produced locally. Akashi aren’t traditional or artisan in a manner that would hinder them, however, and they have embraced modern innovations such as temperature controlled fermentation in recent years. The more recent progressive outlook led Akashi to individual discoveries and ideas, the prime example probably being the ‘Genmai Aged Sake’; Japan’s first ever brown rice sake. Bottled and released in 2005 following its inception in 2002, ‘Genmai Aged Sake’ represents a truly novel concept, using unpolished (brown) rice that’s aged for a unusually long time.The different temperatures provide a changing array of flavours for the palate to appreciate. Warm sake is rather unusual in the world of alcoholic beverages, but it has a long history.

Helpful as these categories are, they offer only a vague sense of the breadth and variety available, even within each category. The only way to really find out what you like is to taste broadly and see what lights up your palette. Akashi aren’t traditional or artisan for its own sake, - as in sake, not sake - oh for goodness sake! I mean - never mind...While people outside Japan are just catching on to the great potential of sake and food matching, it’s a known fact in sake’s homeland that it can all but transform a meal. What’s more, it goes with a variety of dishes beyond what we might think of as its classic partner, sushi. As the Japanese saying goes, “sake and food never fight”. As relevant now as it was then, Akashi-tai continues to be a market-leader and relentless tailblazer of authentic, Japanese sake. If you fancy a taste of something new, or enjoy the odd sake and want a prime example, you’re in the right place. Kanpai!