When Life gives you Lemons… Boston Part Deux

My Boston Sake Geek adventure continues! IF you missed part one of my sake adventure you can read it here.Maddie picked out a new Japanese restaurant called Douzo (131 Dartmouth St Boston, MA 02116 (617) 859-8886)
to try for our sake-centric dinner. This was a great call on her part as this place is new and stylish. Well, stylish on a beige-on-beige, taupe-on-taupe kind of way. The first thing you notice are the soaring 20 foot ceilings.

Looking over the sake menu, there were not a lot of surprises or things I hadn’t had. So, I went with my old “Japanese roulette” technique and ordered what I wasn’t familiar with and… Let’s put it this way – you can’t win every time.

The two Sakes I selected were: Crazy Milk Nigori (Oimatsu Brewery) and what they called Osakaya-Chobei Daiginjo (Ozeki Corp).Now, it should be obvious why I picked this Nigori to try. First, off Scott loves Nigoris. and second of all… Come on! “Crazy Milk”?!?! That is the most amazing name ever. My favorite part of the Crazy milk bottle was the little English disclaimer: “This is alcoholic beverage”. Um, yeah. I don’t think cafeteria’s across America will be serving crazy milk to increase calcium intake among young people.
The taste? The Nigori was rough around the edges and a little bit thick. I think they was going for ‘very creamy’ but it ended up with a slightly unwelcoming texture… I guess it’s what you could call a “crazy” texture.

I selected the second sake thinking that the most expensive and only Daiginjo on the menu ($25 for 300ml) had to be worth looking into. When the dark bottle arrived at the table, I was a little deflated to recognized it immediately as a Ozeki product. well, I told me self – it was still a daiginjo and could very well be worth trying. So we poured and I took a sip. I’m not a huge fan of this sake. The best way to describe it was off balance / unharmonious. It wasn’t the subtle, elegant Daiginjo I am used to from other breweries.So there I was, trying to impress my family and friends with my vast sake knowledge and I ended up ordering two duds. We had each sipped about as much from each as we could from the two bottles and there was about a third of a bottle left of each. People – I was seriously thinking about just leaving the sake there – VERY unlike me to leave sake leftovers of any kind. That’s when my sister Maddie had a Stroke Of Genius.

She said: “You could try and mix them together.”Huh?! Wha? errr? I mean, Maddie was valedictorian of our high school, so I knew she was smart, but this takes the cake. Well, what do I have to lose? So I took the Ozeki and poured it into the Crazy milk bottle. gave it a shake and we all took a sip. The results were unanimous. These Sakes were better together! The daiginjo thinned out the unpleasant texture of the nigori and the Nigori somehow brought more balance to the taste of the rough daiginjo. Kanpai, indeed!

Not only that, but we invented a new kind of drink!! Not a Sake cocktail, where you mix Sake with juice or another alcohol. This was a sake-on-sake mixture which I’m calling a “Sake-Smashup”! We quickly realized the possibilities were endless. And why not?

I see wines all the time that are mixed. for example wines made up of: 70 % merlot, 25 % cabernet franc and 5 % cabernet sauvignon . Why not try a blended sake? something to think about…As a final bon mot, Maddie noted that is was fitting that these sake-sake smashup unions were invented in Massachusetts, the one state in the country where ALL types of Marriages are legal! I’ll drink to that.