Sake Rising: Why Japan's National Drink Is Making Waves in Europe
At the starting block of the Bermondsey Beer Mile — or the finish line, depending on your ability to send a coherent text message — you’ll find the UK’s first brewery dedicated to, at least round these parts, the most misunderstood drink of all: sake.
Kanpai, meaning “cheers” in Japanese, began life seven years ago in a poky lockup in Peckham, south-east London, first conceived as a husband-and-wife home-brewing operation. Within months, a successful online crowd-funding campaign allowed Tom and Lucy Wilson to release their first batches of craft sake, which were snapped up by the department store Selfridges. In 2018, they graduated to a nearby taproom, and late last year, buoyed by success, they rolled their barrels over to the booziest street in the country.
All this to say: business is booming. A great wave is building in the world of Japanese rice wine. Just, er, try not to use the words “rice wine” under these railway arches.
“From a production standpoint, and looking at the chemistry behind it, the closest alcohol
to sake is beer. But a lot of people view sake incorrectly,” says Tom, leading me past Kanpai’s wood-panelled bar, through to the laboratory at the back. He shows me the silver drums where rice is polished, washed, soaked and steamed, before koji (a mould culture) and yeast is introduced. That’s when the three-month fermentation process can begin.
“We like to think of it as ‘brewed like a beer, enjoyed like a wine’, but it can also be used in cocktails, so it kind of transcends both of those categories,” explains Tom, describing sake as “all of those things and none of those things, simultaneously”.
Sake’s identity crisis was once an obstacle to its acceptance outside of Japan. (The harsh, microwaved shots that often accompany bills at sushi restaurants haven’t helped much, either.) But things are changing. Exports of Japanese sake — which ranges from 10 to 20 per cent ABV — have grown almost year on year for over a decade, even as the drink’s popularity has waned in its homeland (domestic sales are down 75 per cent from their 1970s peak. Blame highballs and cheap beer). The international market was 1.8 times larger in 2023 than in 2019, totalling sales of ¥41.1 billion (£213m), and searches for sake on the website of Berry Bros & Rudd — the UK’s oldest wine merchant — rose 30 per cent in the same year. Historic Japanese brewing houses, once focused on China and the US, now have Europe firmly in their sights.
They’re not the only ones. Across the country, several other UK-based breweries, including Dojima and The Sparkling Sake Company, both located in Cambridgeshire, are making the case for seasonal batches that won’t suffer under the strain of a long-haul flight. Earlier this year, in Italy, crop scientists managed to grow sake-grade rice on European soil for the first time.
One reason for the upswing in popularity is a new wave of sommeliers who value sake’s versatility in an increasingly experimental landscape. “You go to a tasting menu at a restaurant, there are now no restrictions on what is being paired with those dishes,” says Tom, inspecting a freshly sealed bottle that can be served at a range of temperatures. He considers sake an “easy win” for chefs because of the presence of glutamic acid, which reacts with salt in dishes to create monosodium glutamate, or MSG: the superpowered (and unfairly vilified) flavouring agent of Asian cooking.
When it comes to gastronomic science experiments, there’s no greater authority than Heston Blumenthal. At The Fat Duck, the British chef’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, the head sommelier Melania Bellesini curated a full sake pairing menu, praising the drink’s “umami character [that] unites with the dish, lifting the flavour profile”. Bottles at the premium end of the scale — often labelled ginjo or daiginjo — are generally best served chilled, and can easily reach fine-wine prices.
When Kanpai released its first batch in 2017, Tom and Lucy sold their sake in beer bottles to tap into the all-powerful craft movement. A lot has changed since then, and now it’s being embraced by natural-wine aficionados. It surely won’t be long before sake can stand alone. “The educational element is ongoing,” says Tom, as I leave him to prep for the evening ahead. “But there’s a sake for everyone.”
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