Sake Festival

I never liked beer, but I always thought it was because I hadn't tried one that I liked. Out of all of the beer that is brewed in the world, there must be one that I like. So I did the nerdy thing and took a short class over winter vacation at Wellesley about beer. I realized that I like wheat and/or Belgian beers the best.

Since I got here in August, I've tried nihonshu, aka Japanese sake (fermented rice), from various places, but I never felt compelled to drink anymore than a sip to try it out. Then I heard about a sake festival in Ikeda, Tokushima. I thought that I would be able to find a sake that I could enjoy the same way I found wheat beer. So a couple of my friends and I took a train over to Ikeda last weekend to test taste many different sakes from all over Shikoku.

Other than us, the festival was attended by several elderly Japanese men, a couple of whom didn't hold their sake well. We didn't get any pictures of that though.


There were 33 of these setups. Each sheet gave the taste rating on a sake bitter/dry to sweet scale, alcohol content, where it was made, etc.


We paced ourselves. Don't worry, the samples were small and we didn't try ALL 33.


Well no such luck. There were only about two that didn't make us go "bleh, that's awful!" Oh well, we tried. Maybe it's better this way.