Located upstairs in the corner, one refrigerated section. Stocks seem fairly fresh, although a rather narrow variety. But with that said there are few interesting ones. There are some that are not my style at all and seem a bit easier to find at the likes of say Total Wine & More, some mom and pop wine shop, or…at my local NorCal Asian supermarket.
With that said here are some I recommend that are a bit niche and of possible interest to the few that care on this board.
Seikyo (top shelf left most bottle, and the bottle on the 2nd shelf from the top, 3rd from left) are double pasteurized (for export), from Hiroshima. Can’t say I’ve tried these but these should be quite refreshing to have chilled in the summer.
These are the more interesting ones that caught my eye
This one is unavailable in Northern California and the distributor or importer looks like it has an address in Atlanta, GA of all efffin places. Even my well versed sake sommelier, writer, and lecturer friend in Japan has never heard of this brewery. More info here. Ishioka Yoitsuru Tokubetsu Junmai – UrbanSake.com
Took one for the team and picked up a bottle…(aka cover me it’s going down the hatch at some point). And the stamp on the bottle shows a format I cannot comprehend. So it’s either Matrix Wachowski code, or some binary language…sigh. Hope it’s phresh enough.
This is Yuki No Bosha Junmai Daiginjo and seem to be mostly available in Southern California. Haven’t had it yet, but I personally love their low end Yamahai Junmai that doesn’t taste like a Yamahai sake.
http://www.jotosake.com/sakes/yuki-no-bosha
The Junmai Ginjo is available in the refrigerator but I absolutely do not like it. Sugary sweet on the attack, very thin bodied and high acidity but no nuance like a French chardonnay …so sad. But it also could have been a bad batch… Hopefully the JD is even better
Last but not least this is one of my favorites!
Maboroshi Nakao’s Secret http://www.jotosake.com/sakes/maboroshi
The green apple aromas and minerality in this sake are very nicely done, despite not using apple yeast like their daiginjo line. First had this years ago at Izakaya Ginji San Mateo and was very impressionable…sadly no longer available on the menu and shops up here don’t carry it (let alone restaurants that I know of). So this was a good souvenir for me to relive some great memories. I would recommend this with yakitori and izakaya for sure… maybe even give it a shot with Italian (my friend who runs an Italian restaurant in Tokyo that pairs sake with his food, has this in his lineup regularly).
Wine drinkers who are adventurous, please keep this one in mind.
Remedy Liquors is about 15 to 20 mins ish drive from Bob Hope Airport. Can’t say their wine selections are all that interesting and it seemed a touch warm upstairs, so it was a good thing the sake were all nicely chilled.
Thanks.
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