keninabu!

Rihaku/ Li Po/ Li Bai/ 李白

I'm almost done with my 300ml bottle of Junmai ginjyo sake from Rihaku, which is a Japanese sake brewery named after the infamous Tang Dynasty Chinese/Persian poet, Li Bai (李白）, or Rihaku in Japanese.

The sake itself is pretty awesome: it's smooth, and after swallowing it leaves this savory flavour in the mouth, which is what the Japanese call umami. Modern Westerners will readily identify it as the flavour and texture of monosodium glutamate, which is actually naturally bountiful in shellfish and seafood in general. It sounds disgusting, I know, but the sake really does taste very refined with the umami at the end, lingering in the mouth after the sake is already in the belly!

李白 himself is a very interesting character. He wrote many poems while completely drunk, and one of his most famous poems is called 《将进酒》, which is basically an Ode to Wine. This is one of the most famous poems in Chinese literature, and is the origin of a number of famous phrases, such as:

天生我才必有用，
千金散尽还复来。

(Heaven gave me my talent, and I can definitely find some employment:
the thousand gold pieces spent can easily be earned back)

and

钟鼓馔玉不足贵，
但愿长醉不愿醒。

(The lavish lifestyle is not really precious,
I would prefer to be drunk forever and not wake up to face the music)

As you can tell, this poet is the right person to have a sake named after him!

posted by keninabu @ 12:28 AM