DRINKS ON FOREIGN SHORES

22 October 2026 

During my 2023 exploration of Japan, I tasted a variety of drinks:

  •     Plum wine in Tokyo, Kanazawa and Hiroshima
  •     Lots of different sakes included unpasturised, 40% alcohol, 60% alcohol, yuzu and plum
  •     Locally made (and fairly horrible) white wine
  •     Spanish cava that one could buy in small bottles from the equivalent of 711 stores
  •     Even whiskey shots in a Katsuhiro restaurant (where all the food is covered in fine breadcrumbs and served on skewers). 
    Loretta & Ann & Sake, Tokyo, 2023

In the historic wooden town of Takayama, we visited the oldest remaining sake brewery, Hirase, which had just celebrated its 400th anniversary.  A ball made of the small, dried branches of a cedar tree is hung to indicate that the building houses a brewery and when the next season’s sake is available a green ball of the same material is hung up to let people know about the new vintage.  Our guide said that it’s hard to find craftspeople who can make them these days.

We were taken through the process: a specially locally grown rice, hulled (40% means more hull taken off than 60%) steamed, a microbe added to enable the yeast to react to the rice for fermentation, done in porcelain lined tanks, only kept for a year or two at the most. I confess, I’m not that fond of straight sake but I changed my mind when I tasted the yuzu flavoured version.

We had the chance to taste more sake at the Nishioka Brewery on Shikoku after a morning of learning how to make paper and to weave, and once again, it was the citrus flavoured sake that appealed.

Nishiola Brewery, 2023

But why, you wonder, am I telling this story years after the trip?

Because Susan and I saw a film in the Japanese Film Festival this week called Purehearted. It’s about a young woman’s journey to make rum using Okinawa sugar cane in the Caribbean style Rhum Agricole, which uses freshly squeezed sugarcane juice rather than molasses. As a rum drinker, the story line appealed although I wasn’t aware that rum was made in Japan. But even Susan, a gin drinker, loved the film. Our heroine is a timid contract worker who lives with her tofu-making grandmother and mother. She has the chance to enter a competition to come up with a business idea and overcomes all the hurdles including her own lack of knowledge, corporate scepticism and island politics to succeed. It’s based on a true story and although I’ll probably never get to taste the rum from the Grace Distillery on the island of Minamidaito, the film made for a charming feel-good night out.

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