Henry Yuen
Profile
As a food & wine lover, Henry has been sharing his thoughts
and experiences in his Chinese language columns for websites
and magazines. | |
 |
|
My friend Masa Shiroki brews sake in his own Artisan Sake Brewery ‘Osake’ down at Granville Island, Canada’s very first artisan sake brewery. Osake literally means ‘The house of wine’. In his small shop, Masa and his wife work hard but are only able to produce small lots of premium sake. But his first batch was scooped up faster than he could make, and advance orders keep coming in regularly, Osake’s ‘made in BC’ premium sake was a great success. Masa’s dream also came true and now he is looking for a bigger location.
To folks in the F&B industry here, Masa is a Sake Master, a pioneer and also an educator. He’s the guy who, while Vancouverites were still sipping hot sake, went against the tide and started talking about premium sake, served cold. And these days, top restaurants are eagar to list premium sakes on their wine menu for customers do demand for them.
What makes premium sake such hot sales? It’s all in the rice, the water, and of course, the sake master’s brewing technique.
Jumai, the top grade rice used to brew sake, bears the flavour, aroma and texture perfect for premium sake, is grinded so only the finest portion of the rice goes into the sake making process.
Much like wine, the alcohol content of premium sake is around 11 – 14%. Cold sake is pure, refreshing, sweet and has that subtle glutinous fragrant that is great to pair with food. |
 |
|
I took a trip to Golden Mile Cellars up at Oliver, and took a lesson on soil and dirt, as well as vines.
Golden Mile Cellars, a relatively new winery owned by Pam and Mick Luckhurst, moved to the Okanagan Valley in 2003. The winery may be new, but the location of the land is full of farming history. It will take time for the winery to produce bigger volume of wines, but the Luckhursts are patient, and they’ve gotten Michael Bartier as their winemaker.
We all know soil, rain, wind and sunshine all has a role to play in viticulture, but Michael looks at these elements much deeper, and feeling the soil with his bare hands is obviously a normal thing to do. Under his detailed explanation and illustration, we observed the soil, grabbed and feeled them in our hands. The lumps of soil were so longer dirt, but iota of nourishment, dust of gold!
Golden Mile Cellars produces 15,000 cases of wine annually in three tiers:
Road 13 blends; Estabe Varietal wines and a premium series called Black Arts. | |
2008 Kwong Fung Group. All rights reserved