Current Sake Industry in Japan

Video Transcript

"I'm Beua Timken, master sake sommelier. And we're speaking about the history of sake and more importantly I'm taking about where sake is today in Japan. Many people would think that sake's doing incredibly well because it's becoming very popular through out the world. It's not the case. The sake industry in Japan is actually almost tanking. A lot of brewers are having a lot of problems because there's so many different beverages out there to choose from. And young kids are not drinking sake because they perceive it to be their father's or their grandfather's drink and many of the Japanese youth, let's call it, would like to, you know, drink anything other than something that's Japanese. They like to drink California Chardonnays or their Scotch Whiskeys and just anything that's not Japanese. Also disposable income, sake's a little bit more expensive on a price point. These guys are drinking a distilled beverage called Shochu, and they're drinking a lot of beer, malted drinks. So on the whole, the sake industry is really going down on one factor. And that factor is, there's a whole segment of sake called Futsushu which is like table sake, it's just run of the mill brew, very easy to make, it's not premium, it's not Ginjo style sake, which we're used to here in the States. And this segment is getting crushed. Literally we're loosing about two hundred breweries a year in Japan because people are not paying for Futsushu, cheaper sake. Now Junmai sake, the first in the premium categories, and Gingjo sake, they're kind of on a little bit of an up tick. Junmai's flat and Gingjo's going up. People are starting to realize, wow, that the elegance and the divine nature of these premium sakes make good gifts are being used in applications, they're doing more food pairings. They're seeing how popular abroad sake is becoming. And so I've always hoped there'd be a boomerang affect where the western, the West would show the Japanese how great a product they actually have and the younger generation would then prop up the industry on the inside. But when you think about sake, think that it is an industry that still is not doing well. It's really struggling. It's expensive to hold a brewery, and the great thing is or the amazing thing is or the shameful thing is, some of these breweries are you know, from sixteen seventy three, fifteen ninety four. A lot of these guys are closing. It's really a hard hard bitter pill to swallow. But hopefully, in the future more people will drink some of this premium sake and will see the shift where the big breweries might change and start making more hand crafted sakes for the future."