There's every need to be Sake

The consuming equivalent of a closed mind is a narrow palate. Some drinkers embrace wine in all its diversity but announce, perplexingly, that they "don't like beer".

If you enjoy cognac, there's no reason why Scotland's great malts should be beyond you; flavoured vodka is gin's first cousin; and if you can eat a pudding then you can swallow a liqueur. I'm sure there are many who consider sake an affront to the border territories of their cosy, stale mouths. If, though, like me, you love the sweet, mushroomy warmth and fume-laden depth of fine sake, then this is your month.

Japan itself still has 1,800 sake breweries: it resembles beer-loving Britain before the big breweries set off on their appropriating "march of destruction" between 1950 and 1990. Most are micro-brewery sized and family-run; the sakes produced by all but a handful have never flown into Heathrow before. Throughout May, as part of the Japan 2001 celebrations, Selfridges will be selling 34 sake varieties from 18 different breweries up and down Japan. I called in to taste eight of these - and to meet Shunsuke Kohiyama, the brewer of Takasago sake from Hokkaido, as well as American sake expert John Gauntner.

Sake is often erroneously called "rice wine". Since it is based on a cereal, it is in fact beer, though its sipping strength of 15 to 20 per cent alcohol by volume makes it taste wine-like. As with all beers, the chief production challenge in making it is how to convert its unfermentable starches into fermentable sugars. Barley is malted to render it fermentable; with sake, the answer is what's called koji.

This is a fungus (Aspergillus oryzae) which is sprinkled on cooled, steamed rice. It's then left in warm damp rooms for a few days, producing enzymes which convert the rice starch to sugars. Add water and yeast, and in three or four weeks you will have sake. (Cheaper examples are fortified with added alcohol and flavourings.)

Sake is having a hard time in Japan at the moment. It's associated with that ill-starred pariah group within society known as "older men". Beautiful unwrinkled Japanese people want tannic red wine nowadays. "It's an effect of westernisation," sighed Mr Kohi- yama. "Many house now without tatami room. If there is 50 people, nobody people wearing Japanese kimono. We eat McDonald, Kentucky Fried Chicken. Oh dear." Indeed. Sake's relatively high alcoholic strength counts against it too, especially with the young. "If drinking sake, too much drunk. Cannot play TV game," was Mr Kohiyama's astute summary.

Until last week, I had always been served sake warm, in little ceramic eggcup-like vessels, and greatly enjoyed it in that form. I was in for a ticking-off. "This very important point." Mr Kohiyama wagged his finger. "European and American people think sake should be drunk warm. But quality has been raised. If sake is drunk just warm, quality is limited. Excellent sake best cold. Of course, we do not say bad to warm sake. Good for health. Very close to the body temperature is nice for the stomach. But also cold is perfect. On the rocks is very OK." So there you have it.

And thus I had them: from the Kokushi Muso Jyunmai of Mr Kohiyama's own Takasago brewery (£5.75 for 330ml) to the Jyunmai Dai Ginjyo of Sudo (£69 for 72cl). The kind of aromas and flavours you can find in these superb sakes may remind you of vanilla, honey, marsh grasses, orchard fruits, star anise, banana bread, wild mushrooms and the B-vitamin yeastiness of Marmite.

These final, decidedly savoury notes made me suspect that it is in sake more than any other drink that you will find what researchers now consider the fifth primary taste, known as umami. (There were previously thought to be only four primary tastes, detected on different zones of the tongue: sweet, salt, sour and bitter.) Umami is also found in soy sauce and miso, both of which are made using the same koji techniques.

John Gauntner confirmed that umami does play a role in sake aromas and flavours. I also asked him why the best sakes were so expensive. By way of explanation, he showed me some samples of sake rice (more expensive, in any case, than table rice) before and after processing. The ordinary-looking grains are milled repeatedly until they come to resemble translucent seed-sized gemstones; up to 60 per cent, in other words, of the rice grain is thrown away.