For Stefano this is 4th time he has visited Japan and although it was such a long journey with our children (7months & nearly 3years) it was a fun and relaxing trip.
One of the big adventures is visiting a Sake Brewers where my family lives. Embarrassingly or accidentally my sister (one year younger) is also married to an Italian and they run a pizzeria in Japan and are living with my mother. Stefano loves shopping and I hate shopping except food. He normally spends his time at several DIY stores or electric shops or souvenir shops hunting down for packaging and ideas to inspire our future lines. Apparently this is very inspiring…….….. So when he eventually had enough touring shops he asked to me if we could go to see something interesting like someone making interesting stuff…The town where my family lives is not like living in Tokyo or Kyoto but if you are looking carefully there are lots of interesting areas but fortunately if you were born and lived there those of things never come to…..
I was thinking where to go….so far we have visited Tajimi City where is famous for pottery years ago and 2 years ago we have also visited Seki City which is very well known for knives. When I was chatting about this my sister said to me that one of her customers owns a sake Brewery and she is happy to take us there.
It was fascinating place to visit. I felt like time slipped back to at least 60 years ago! Some of the brewery houses were built 200 years ago. Amazing! As well as seeing how to make Sake, Stefano was very impressed when he tasted Mirin and thought this can be served well with our cheese. Of course, we have brought a bottle of Mirin 3years old from Japan.
I will tell you a bit of history about Mirin. Mirin makes its first appearance in Japanese history during the turbulent Sengoku era (mid-16th century), in sequence with the arrival of distilled spirit shochu in Japan.
Mirin was developed by integrating Shochu, a distilled alchohol beverage tha is stronger tha sake, with the traditional skills of producing sweet Japanese sake, creating a totally different and very sweeter rice wine. During the Edo era (1615-1868), people pursued even sweeter mirin – and the sweetest mirin history appears at the end of this Edo era. Mirin was a summer drink, served chilled by immersing it in the cold water of wells. The Japanese cusine changed dramatically in the 1700s. The centre of Japan moved from the Osaka and Kyoto region to Edo(Tokyo), and likewise the centre of foods and cuisine also shifted towards Edo. Since then, mirin has been used more in cooking rather than a beverage, and at the present, most of the mirin produced in Japan is used for cooking – an extraordinary history for an alchoholic beverage.
Mirin is made from glutinous rice, koji (steamed rice cultivated with koji mold, a fungus that exists only in Japan) ans 41% rice shochu. The flavour of the mirin ripens as the product matures with time.
We have already started giving tasting last Saturday. Everyone seem liked with Mirin and cheese and for Japanese it was a bit funny concept as we all know Mirin is used more in cooking rather than drinking. If you are interested in participating Mirin tasting please come to our Tastings on Saturday from 9:30 to 16:00. Please mention you have read our bog! We will give you a tasting for Mirin!!!!!
Lastly, I thank you Mr Kato who kindly gave us a tour of his brewery. It was fascinating to find out that he and his staff have a passion for food like us and we can see the result.
We have brought a 3 years old mirin back but they also have a 10 years old mirin. I just wonder what the flavour would be like after 10 years???????
Naoko
