Sake Cruise ’09: Let the Seminars Begin!

Today was a big day on Sake Cruise 2009! Not only is today our first day “at sea” (i.e. no ports of call – sailing the open ocean all day) but today was also my first Sake Seminar for the Guests aboard the Seven Seas mariner as well as an informal staff training.

The day started with that now familiar question in my mind… will we have mild seas or wild seas?! I’m still a little rattled after the first night of “rock and roll” on board, but I’m delighted to report that today is easy sailing. Smooth calm seas! yeeeees!

After a quick breakfast, I headed off to do a 30 min staff training on the finer points of sake. I have the wine and beverage staff of about 30 people an introduction into sake classifications, flavor profiles and also into serving sake. We were enjoying Junmai, Junmai Ginjo and Junmai Daiginjo sakes at 9:30 am. The breakfast of champions!

The staff training was a lot of fun and they had many good questions. I touched on serving etiquette and serving vessels, too. We covered as much as we could to give all the beverage staff a solid foundation in sake. And we had a lot of fun, too.

At 3pm, I had my first seminar for the guests of the cruise. The Seminar was held in the “Compass Rose” restaurant on board. That is the largest of all the elegant restaurants on the ship. They set up a projector for the powerpoint and we were off to the races!

In total, there were 70 guest in attendance – a great turn out! This introductory class of the series was all about sake classifications. it’s a great basis on which to build for the upcoming classes. Here is our description for the class:

Sake Classifications
In this lecture, we will introduce guests to the six basic sake classifications. Learning how sakes are graded and ranked is the cornerstone to a solid understanding of sake culture and enjoyment. We will explore how the use of rice milling technology, sake ingredients and Japanese history have all come together to give us the sake grading system in place today.

Sakes for Tasting:
– Otokoyama Junmai
– Kakurei Junmai Ginjo
– Wakatake Junmai Daiginjo

I think the seminar was well received and I’m looking forward to hopefully having some repeat students in tomorrow’s class which is dedicated to Sake Ingredients!