Tastes and feels like: Green melon and yellow watermelon, bosc pear skin, fern-covered coastal rainforests, green apple, sweet cucumber (midsummer lemon cucumbers), umeboshi plum, astringency (banana peel), with salty chalkiness on the finish. There's a bit of umami filling out the body, but it's lean and it's hard to describe. White mushroom, raw udon noodle?
Mild on the nose, a lot bigger on the palate, but still clean and crisp. Strongly reminiscent of chablis and good muscadet, for which chalky minerality, crisp green fruit, and tension are key.
Pairing:
Pair the same way you'd pair Chablis or Muscadet. Tinned seafood, fresh seafood, gougeres, goat cheese, veal, nicoise salad, clam and broccoli raab flatbread, cured meats with anise and other spices...wherever a bright, cleansing wash is much needed to restore the appetite for another bite.
Stats:
- Prefecture: Yamaguchi
- Rice: Yamada Nishiki & Hattan Nishiki
- Polishing: 60%
- Starter: Sokujo
- Water: semi-hard, local source which runs across a limestone plateau.
- Yeast: #9 (note: nama version uses #7, not #9)
- Grade: Tokubetsu Junmai
Brewery:
4th generation President/Toji Takahiro Nagayama is passionate about his estate grower-producer style sake, allowing him to brew sake that represents the regional terroir. "Taka" is the first character of Takahiro-san's name and means "noble." His unwavering discipline and commitment to technical precision results in elegant but restrained sake. In addition Takahiro's technical and philosophical background is highly inspired: for 4 years he worked in the cellart of highly respected micro-negociant Philippe Pacalet, who produces wine from select vineyards in Cotes de Nuits and Cotes de Beaune. Takahiro pursued this role because of a deep inspiration in the wines of Burgundy, particularly Chablis. So it's no wonder at all really, that he looks to the limestone hillsides of Yamaguchi for inspiration in crafting Noble Arrow: Chablis' brother from another mother.