The list
Twenty labels on the list at any time, a resident brewery each year, and one flight of five poured alongside the nigiri.
How the list works
Each year the room takes a resident brewery and carries a deeper range from it than any importer would stock. For 2024 and 2025 that is Tedorigawa, in Ishikawa, and Yuki corresponds with them directly — some of that correspondence ends up in the journal.
The other nineteen rotate every few weeks. Polishing ratios below are the percentage of the grain remaining after milling, so a lower number means more of the rice has been ground away. It is a useful number and not a quality score; a 70% junmai can be a better glass than a 35% daiginjo, and often is with oily fish.
The list
Grouped the way Yuki thinks about them rather than by classification. Ask her what has just landed.
€58 for five
Earth, lactic depth, savoury. The brewery lets its own walls start the mash rather than adding lactic acid, which takes twice as long and tastes like it.
€14
Pear, white blossom, mineral. Made by a brewery that also makes wine in Burgundy, and it shows in the acidity.
€19
Clean, herbaceous, a dry close. The safest glass on the list and none the worse for it.
€13
Served warm at about forty degrees, for the anago. Warming it is not a lesser way to drink sake, whatever you have been told.
€12
Not sake. Grassy and sweet, and it closes the flight because after five pours the palate needs something that asks nothing of it.
€8
Rice, water, koji, yeast
The resident brewery at its most serious. Yamahai depth under daiginjo fragrance, which should not work and does.
€24
Kimoto, the older and more laborious ancestor of yamahai. Broad, almost meaty. Very good warm.
€15
Made by an English toji in the Kyoto hills. Wild, high acid, unfiltered in some batches.
€16
Quiet and rice-forward, the sort of glass that disappears next to strong food and is perfect next to hirame.
€17
Dry, brisk, built for a coastal diet. The name means drunken whale.
€13
Milled further, cooler ferment
Melon and white flowers, almost weightless. Ask for it in a wine glass rather than a cup.
€26
Precise and cold-fermented. A benchmark glass, and the one Hiroshi pours for anyone who says they do not like sake.
€21
Fragrant, soft, widely known for good reason. Better with the tamago than with the nigiri.
€18
Rounder and warmer than most ginjo, from a small Kyushu brewery that ships very little.
€17
Lightly sparkling, unpasteurised, low alcohol. Opens the meal well if you would rather not start on the flight.
€15
The end of the list
Amber, nutty, closer to an oloroso than to sake. Two glasses left of the 2016 draw.
€28
Coarsely filtered, so the rice solids stay in. Sweeter, and it handles the ikura supplement.
€14
A brewery run by former agave distillers. Not classifiable, not for everyone, and the most interesting thing on the list.
€19
Grown on the brewery’s own organic paddies. Rustic, dry, and it improves as it warms in the glass.
€16
Genshu, so nothing is added back after pressing. Nineteen per cent alcohol. One pour, and Yuki will say so.
€18