suirakuten

...must...brief...

This whole work-Saturday, play-Sunday thing has worked out reasonably well to date, so of course we had to go mess with the formula today by deciding to squeeze some play time into Saturday. (Tomorrow we're helping some friends move from San Mateo to South San Francisco, which, while a good deed in my book, hardly counts as "play time.")

We couldn't avoid the Saturday indulgence, see; today at 4:30 was a long-awaited event at Fuki Sushi. I'm a huge fan of wine-tasting, beer-tasting, scotch-tasting and pretty-much-any-good-quality-alcohol-tasting, so I couldn't have been more thrilled when I picked up the little promotional card advertising Sake 101: a sampling of eight premium sakes from Japan, complete with hors d'oeuvres.

I wasn't disappointed. Three of the sakes were of the junmai type, the Sake of the Common Man. Junmai sake smelled and tasted, for the most part, the way you'd expect sake to smell and taste. (With one exception: an item called shusen, which was pale yellow and smelled horrible. Tasted OK, though.) Further up the food chain were a pair of ginjo sakes, one of which was apparently designed to please women drinkers. Ironically, I preferred the other one, as did both of the other women at our table.

At the top of the sake totem pole were the dai ginjo sakes -- neat, pure bliss in a glass. A dai ginjo, according to our tasting guide, is supposed to slip straight through your mouth and down your throat. This sounds absurd until you taste one and realize that that's exactly what it does...a wash of flavor rolls back over your palate and disappears as you swallow, leaving no aftertaste. The best one ($100/bottle!) bore the poetic name of suirakuten, which the tasting guide, after a moment's thought, translated as "heaven of tipsy delight."

That's where I am right now. And I have to brief.

Background noise of the moment: ear candy, the Pergolesi Stabat Mater. It goes well with suirakuten. I should make that my new motto, or username, or something.

thus spake /jca @ October 12, 2002 08:01 PM