 Well, good evening everybody and welcome to our Sake Symposium which is entitled Understanding the Unique Aspects of Sake. I'm Helen McNaughton, I'm the Chair of the Japan Research Centre here at SOAS and for those of you who may be new to SOAS, we are the largest hub of Japanese Studies scholars and students in the UK and possibly in Europe now and we pull together all the members, students and academics across SOAS into our Japan Research Centre to work on research topics but also like tonight to deliver a diverse range of public seminars, lectures and events relating to Japan. So first I'm going to introduce and welcome all our speakers tonight. We have five speakers which is not our usual format so this is something a bit exciting and they're all going to speak for about 10 minutes maximum each. So first I'd like to very much welcome Saura Koichi-sama. He is the 13th generation owner of Urakatsumi Sake Brewery in Japan. He's the Vice President of Japan Sake and Short Shoemakers Association and also the founding chairman of Sake Samurai as well and he's come all the way from Japan to be with us tonight so please welcome him. Now he's going to be talking later about the heritage and the future of Sake making. Then we have Shimizu Yusaka-sama. He's the Minister of Finance at the Embassy of Japan here in London. So he's going to be talking us through the internationalisation of Sake. So welcome Mr Shimizu. And then we have Ichihashi Hirohisa-sama and he is Director of the Food Division at Jettro London, so Japan External Trade Organisation and he's going to be talking about Sake export from Japan and then overview of the UK Sake market as well so welcome. And then we have Chris Ashton-sama, I said summer for everybody else. Director of the International Wine Challenge IWC and he's going to be talking about international Sake promotion through his IWC wine platform and particularly like to thank him and Sake Samurai for their very generous sponsorship of the Sake reception. I'm sure this is the most important point where you came along tonight. Immediately after this at 6.30 we will have a Sake reception. Please wear your stickers that you've been given so that you can get into the reception. It's going to be immediately across the building but we can all go together so I'll announce it again at the end of the seminar so nobody gets lost. And then last but not least we have Yoshitake Rie-sama who is, many of you will know, is the Sake woman in the UK of Sake Samurai UK and also the rep of the Japan Sake and Short Shumakers Association and it was really Rie's idea for this event tonight and we started off just saying she'd come along and give a talk on Sake but it's growing into a symposium so all thanks to her for arranging all the speakers and the line up. I'd also like to thank the Japan Foundation for co-hosting the event. In a minute Director General Mana Takatori is going to say a few words but before that I'd just like to say that the Japan Foundation has been really integral in helping the JRC in the last two years since 2017. So together we set up our JRC sports symposia series and we've had three events so far, one on Tokyo 1964 and 2020 Olympics, one on the history of Paralympic sport in Japan since 1964 and our most recent one on the history of rugby. The very long history of rugby in Japan are obviously looking forward to this year's Rugby World Cup. So at all of those events sport and Sake proved to be this very winning team and thanks to Mana and Rie and myself working quite closely together on that but tonight for one night only we decided to just drop the sports element and just focus on Sake itself so that's what we're doing. But I really want to thank Mana and Rie for their support of the Japan Research Centre for the last two years and I'm going to hand over to Mana now and then to the speakers. So good afternoon everyone, good evening everyone and a few words from me as well but Helen already has explained everything so we are very pleased to co-organise this special event once again with Japan Research Centre for us. And some of you may know that at the Japan Foundation our main primary objective is to promote friendship and understanding between Japan and the UK and beyond and in the part of this as some of you have already attended that now we are halfway through our annual Japanese film touring programme as well as this week we are celebrating the works by Japanese contemporary authors and writers with Japan now programme this week. So why Sake? Because it is again as usual this is one of our primary objective to promote the friendship and the understanding especially this time in the very British way or the very British of fashions that is with alcohol. Sake, right? OK so as some of you already know for us many of the Japanese the Sake plays an ever present role in our life and for example just with spring just around the corner many of us will be reminded of the Hanami parties, Cherry Blossom viewing parties sitting underneath the Cherry Blossom in the park with your loved ones, friends and colleagues sharing a bottle or two or three more bottles of Sake and for others what comes in mind first could be the warm bottle, warm colour of Sake sharing with your friends cold winter night to just chase away the winter coldness but beyond this Sake has a very long and rich tradition for example the act of breaking the bottle of Sake the opening of an event is still continued to present today and it is often, Sake is often consumed as a part of rituals at shrines so as Helen introduced today we have the five distinguished speakers who will be sharing the expertise with us and from me they are also very pleased to be once again in partnership with us and from me as well I'm very, my great appreciation to our generous supporters thank you very much indeed and I do hope that through this symposium we all be able to consider Sake as not a drink to be drunk but something more influential, more deep something so thank you very much Good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Koichi Saira from Urakasumi Sake Burali and thank you very much for coming to this Sake symposium and at first I'd like to express my sincere thanks to Sowas and Japan Foundation to have this opportunity for introducing many aspects of Sake and for deepening the understanding of these guests and at first I'd like to introduce myself so I'm the 13th generation of Urakasumi Sake Burali it is a family business and which was established in 1724 and as I was introduced as I was the founding chairman of Sake Summer Association it started more than 10 years ago and also I'm the vice president of Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association this is called JHS and especially I'm in charge of the committee of the association of domestic and international promotion of Sakes at first I'd like to explain about what is Sake and many of you know of course Sake is made primarily from rice and water and it is fermented beverage not distilled and especially using a technique of multiple parallel fermentation it is sacralisation and fermentations happen together in the fermentation barrel it is a result in the creation of very higher alcoholic content up to 20% and the Sake is brewed using microorganism like Koji mode and Koji mode and yeast and also we can enjoy Sake warm and chilled at first about the ingredients very quick explanation about the ingredients one is rice usually we have two varieties of Japanese rice classification one is table rice the other is sake rice usually we don't eat sake rice it is developed only for sake making and it is called Sakamai and the characteristics of Sakamai is larger and softer than ordinary table rice and usually more expensive than table rice and also the second is water water quality is important because mineral content of water affects the taste of Sake and semi-hard water is usually ideal but these days we use soft water and lower iron and manganese content is important especially we have to avoid the iron usually it gives the color to the Sake so when you choose the water we choose the water it is low or no iron and as you know in Japan we have lots of rain so we have Japanese rich with high quality ground especially ground water across the country and the ingredients number three is koji actually this picture is koji rice it is steamed rice inoculated with koji mold and enzymes of the mold convert rice starch into sugar and yeast feeds on sugar and yeast we call yeast ko-bo in Japanese it is a particular kind of yeast it is called Sakamai-se sel-bisi-e and it converts sugar to alcohol and sel-bisi-e is Latin word and Japanese word ko-bo it means mother of fermentation so this is also the picture of ko-bo and the very special aspect of Sake is we use the two important elements of Japanese nature and culture water and rice it is very important for the Japanese people so in other words it is very hard of Japan and because the ingredients are so important and the sake-making procedure is very complicated it means sake is made with much care and time so it became an important offering to the gods you can see this is offering to the gods so inside of this photo is sake so sake is so important crops important for Japanese people and we take much time and care so sake is becoming an important offering so in conclusion because of that background history and very long history of sake and since the history of sake started more than 2,000 years ago since then sake has played a central role in Japanese life and culture and strongly connected with traditional ceremonies like a wedding ceremony so you can see that man has a special sake, sakazuki and both of them drink, sip the sake in order to like a contract of marriage and also like this picture sake is an important and integral part of the Japanese diet so sake has a long history and a very important background for Japanese people and Japanese culture so I'd like to explain a bit about the significance of the sake producer that it means like me, the sake producers so sake making business is the oldest industry in Japan it is said that the sake industry started about 600 or 700 years ago and the next thing is the sake producer we call Kuramoto is exist, spread over the country approximately now 1,300 sake producers now produces sake throughout Japan and usually sake making business is a family business and many of us have a history of more than 100 and some sake producers have more than 300 or 400 history and sake business is very influential in the local society so we have close relationship with and influence on local society and culture so however now we have some problems so this is, you know, the line is a number of the people more than 20 years over and this graph is a per capita consumption of whole alcoholic beverage comparing 30 years ago so we drink about 100 litre in a year however now we drink 80 litre we decreased 20% by 20% and this is a trend of alcoholic beverage services the services is not drastically decreased like make keep the amount however this is the amount of sake producers it is a natural drink however the share is becoming smaller and this is the number of producers and the production especially comparing 30 years ago or 40 years ago the number of producers has become 1.5 and also the production is 1.3 comparing 40 years ago so sake is a natural drink however now because of some many reasons one is, you know, we have now many I can say now we have many I'm sorry, sometimes I forget the word many choices, you know regarding alcoholic beverage and also consumers taste become diversified and also younger generation drink less alcoholic beverage so we have the industry have to do we have to recover the production and sales of sake in order to maintain our business of course and also because we have a long history so we think to maintain our business is to maintain and sometimes to recover the Japanese good culture so we have to try harder we have to try harder in order to keep this tradition of sake and sake culture unfortunately the sales is decreasing however the many these days many younger generation the younger sake producers started to try to the wider variety of sake so we in the industry want to keep this tendency and also to promote sake especially among young generations in order to keep sake culture for the future so I'm sorry so my bad English so if you have some you have some new understanding of sake I think I'm very happy so after finishing this symposium so we have sake tasting and also I bring the two sake so please enjoy my sake and other sake so thank you very much so next we have Shimizu so then move on to the title internationalization of sake under this title the main purpose of my presentation is to explain how the National Tax Agency NTA promotes the sake for overseas market to begin with let's explain the relationship between the sake industry and the National Tax Agency why the National Tax Agency is a supervisor for alcohol beverage industry there are two reasons to be explained firstly the tax on alcohol beverage has been historically important resource of tax revenues the government has to secure the revenues from the industry secondly the alcohol drink causes intoxication the government would be better to intervene the industry to tackle the intoxication caused by the alcohol beverage the first slide shows the trend of the tax revenue blue bar shows the total tax revenue from the alcohol beverage line chart shows the total taxable quantity of alcohol beverage the proportion of tax revenue on alcohol beverage is in the total tax revenue recorded a historical high 100 years ago but since the world war 2 the proportion has generally and gradually declined and currently it is stable of tax revenue and originally I thought I'd like to explain the current situation of the industry and the market but this part of my presentation I think was already kind of explained by Mr Sarah so I want to skip these parts then the LTA is not only the regulator but also the promoter of sake against the background of the current industry situation and the market situation LTA recently makes the policy force to promote sake for overseas market first of all the PR for the mass our example is that the LTA set up the exhibition booth at Iseshima Summit, the Olympic or the Paralympic game and other international arena another example to LTA makes brochure to mainly explain the terminology of sake in foreign languages and distributing and you can also download this brochure from the website secondly LTA wants to raise awareness from overseas experts one example is to LTA organise a guide you tour to breweries for diplomats based in Tokyo another example is LTA invites foreign specialist in the food and beverage industry and organise master class for them thirdly support for export LTA publishes and protects of GI geographical indexation currently under the Japan UEPA which came in effect from this month applying for currently UK Nihonshu at the national level and Yamagata and Hexham at the regional level are protected fourthly support for inbound in a broader context the Japanese government to welcome and promote the tourism for foreigners and you can imagine easily that the wine lovers enjoy with it to wineries and taste whiskey lovers to the digital eats why not to the sake lovers to the breweries the government to back up to the tourism for sake breweries it already introduced to the tax measure to exempt the alcohol tax on sake sold for foreign tourists as the authorized breweries thanks to the efforts by breweries and distributors and thanks to the sake lovers the export of sake has increased gradually and many foreign markets for sake is that the largest USA and then the East Asian countries UK is the largest export market in Europe so we will continue to promote sake in UK as well as other countries thank you for your attention hello I'm Hiroshisa Ichihash from Jettaro in my presentation I'd like to talk about sake from the view of trade and business and first of all I have to say that most parts of my presentation will be rather negative so it will be especially discouraging for Mr Sauer but I think understanding the current situation properly is necessary to think about next step for sake so please be patient so before talking about sake I'd like to explain ourselves we are Jettaro, a Jettaro is a Japan extended trade organization and we are a government related organization so we are not a government itself but strongly related with government so most of our budget comes from Japanese government and we are working on behalf of Japanese government and we are working to promote export from Japan export from Japan and investment to Japan so we are working in two different directions one is from Japan to the rest of the world this is export made in Japan Portacts and the other direction is from the rest of the world into Japan this is holding direct investment so we are trying to contribute to the growth of Japanese economy in these two ways and we have 46 offices in Japan we cover all of Japan and 74 offices in 54 foreign countries so we cover almost all of the world and in Europe we have 14 offices in 13 countries London, Paris, Berlin, Düsseldorf and so on and London is the largest office in Europe and we are responsible not only for the UK but also Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland so we cover these six countries so then let's move on to sake first of all let's over view the world market of sake sake exports from Japan to the rest of the world in 2018 was 25.7 million litre and 153 million pound and about one fourth of them went to the US the largest is US and second is Korea the third is China these three countries about more than half of the market and I have to say this figures 25.7 million litre and 150 million pounds these are still very small so looking at domestic market in Japan sake is consumed 525 million litre within Japan in 2017 so only 5% of sake is exported to the world and compared with whisky for example in Japan imported whisky from you can most of them have got and from 221 million pound so you know whisky market only within Japan is larger than sake market in the world other than Japan so sake is now mostly consumed within Japan for very domestic and local products and looking at the UK sake exports from Japan to the UK in 2018 was 0.3 million litre and 2.2 million pound so looking at the whole world very tiny share but in Europe UK is one of the largest markets of sake then looking at the UK market in 2018 the total value of agricultural and official products exported from Japan to the UK was 45.5 million pounds and sake was the largest product among them so first is soy sauce second is the other food preparation the third is beef loin and sake comes to the A space so yes sake is one of the most important products food and drinks exported from Japan to the UK and looking at long-time trend the volume of sake exported from Japan to the UK fluctuates around 0.3 million litre so sometimes increase but decrease then in total on average it's fluctuating around 0.3 million litre for these 15 years so I have to admit that it's not increasing that much and looking at the whole market of alcohol in the UK alcohol drink itself in the UK in 2017 was 40.3 billion pounds so very huge and actually population is half of Japan and the alcohol market is 2 times larger in Japan and this means that market share of sake in the UK in 2017 was estimated as between 0.01% to 0.1% very very tiny share and alcohol consumption per person in the UK is showing a decreasing trend this is same as Japan and this black line is total consumption and this can be broken down into increasing trend of off-trade off-trade means retail consumption supermarket decreasing trend of on-trade consumption on-trade pub restaurant so this means that people less drink outside and drink out of more but in total consumption is decreasing and now one problem sake is mostly consumed on-trade especially Japanese restaurants and this decreasing trend off-trade market is shrinking so this is a problem for our side so we need to strengthen off-trade this increasing trend market we have to strengthen this market but yes this is our problem next I'd like to talk about price of sake we calculated unit price of 81 sake in the retail stores in the UK unit price is a price per 10 million ethanol so pure alcohol so we can compare different categories of alcohol drinks by using this unit price and the result shows that 3.0% per unit is the most frequent price in this one so looking at other major liquor, for example wine 0.79% per unit is average so 3.8 times more expensive than wine on average sake is so sake seems to be too expensive to try I have to say and next slide also about price but I brought down the components of price according to our investigation retail price of sake in the UK is more than 5 times expensive than its producer price so when I assume a producer price is 100 it will be 541 in the retail price so more than 5 times expensive some producer price and this is the components of the price and this is 44% and marine transport shipment is 10% VAT is 70% X's duty alcohol duty is 10% and tariff is very small 0.2% and producer price is 90% so transport and distribution costs accounts for more than 50% of retail price of sake and taxes account for about 30% so we are facing a kind of cycle because of small volume of sake sales higher transport and distribution costs and these codes cause a higher retail price and results in smaller sales so we have to change this kind of cycle into a positive cycle next this is very positive content evaluation of sake sake stands in Biblife in Biblife is one of the largest alcohol trade show in the UK and we asked visitors to our stands most of them are professional people like familiar and barmen or less than staff and to my surprise they intentionally visited us they have clear recognition about sake and most of them have very very positive image about sake like high quality, sophisticated or not selective influence so these professional people have very good image and they evaluate sake very highly this is very good news for us and we also asked them about this advantage of sake and most of them pointed out not perceived by consumers sake is still very mysterious and familiar and known for ordinary consumers so professional people know about sake and they understand that sake has very good quality and very unique character but this is unknown by usual consumers so this is the most disadvantage for sake so then these professional people advised us to have more promotional activities to get perception so let me summarize my presentation the UK sake market is one of the largest in Europe but still small compared with US Asian countries and moreover the total sake market other than Japan is still small compared with other major liquor for example the total sake market other than Japan and the UK sake market is not growing in volume for the long term in these 15 years so we have to work hard and then next summary too the UK alcohol market is on the downward trend and alcohol consumption has been shifting from on trade to off trade and now sake is mostly consumed on trade so we need to thank off trade sales and fortunately we have a strategy for this we are now planning to launch Japanese food and drink mall in Okado maybe you know Okado, Okado is one of the leading online supermarket in the UK and surely sake will be included in this food mall so we are planning to launch this in this September maybe if you use Okado and interested in buying Japanese food and sake please visit this Okado site after September and summary 3 on double-edged sake is 3.8 times more expensive than wine and this is mostly because of high transport cost high price caused low demand and low demand causes higher transport cost and at the same time professionals in the UK points lack of perception is the largest problem of sake so we need to create a good cycle of high demand lower transport cost, lower price, higher demand by promotional events we have strategy for this a new organisation named J.Fooder was it is very funny name but it is established in general in 2017 and they are working in the UK to promote sake for example they launched a website named Food and Sake and they introduced a good combination between sake and local food like fish and chips or cheese they go very well with sake actually and they also introduced a restaurant where we can enjoy this combination so if you are interested please visit this site that is it, thank you very much good evening everyone, my name is Chris Ashton and I am the director of the International Wine Challenge here in London I am going to try and be positive so what do we do the International Wine Challenge is a big competition one of the largest in the world if not the largest we taste about 15,000 wines a year it is a good job I have got what we do is we are a third party a creditor of wine and sake so we try it, it is blind, I use some of the best judges in the world they try it blind and they give it a score or a medal to say this is a really good quality product so it takes for the average person who does not know much about wine or sake if you see one of our logos on a bottle, buy it because it has been through such a tough process to get there a short video now that I would like to just show you we shall explain what we do it is a marketing video, so do not listen to the sales messages you can see what we can do so what do we do we get wine and sake from 55 countries our total amount of countries is about 68 so we get wines from everywhere from Peru, Egypt, first time this year Egypt that binds in Egypt we have 15,000 wines and we have an awards ceremony in later in the year where we have 21 big awards but we do three for sake and the sake ones are sake brewer of the year great value sake and champion sake which is the big one the reason why we do that is the sake brewer that gets the most awards throughout the competition, somebody who is really pushing the boundaries this year a guy had never entered the competition before got five gold medals outstanding, this whole range of sake is outstanding the great value awards are ones we do under a price point, this is really targeted in Japan to push sales of lower cost alcohol lower cost sake, so it's got to be under a thousand yen it's got to be available everywhere so the average person can go and see a trophy standard class product those sales are tremendous sales they go through the roof instantly so what we tried, champion sake champion sake it goes crazy, I've never seen a reaction like it the guys here when they come over for the awards they win their best day of their lives, one guy won it twice he's had two good best days of his life but then it translates back to Japan and it's everywhere else around the world because everybody wants to get it and I've seen some real heartwarming stories of change that has happened we've been around doing sake for 12 years and that's a blink of an eye of the sake industry but so much has changed in that last 12 years and what has happened and is still happening to the sake industry it's fabulous and fascinating all at the same time so when we launched sake back in 2007 Sorosan was the guy who spoke first Sorosan down there, he was the guy who was the president of the sake samurai who came to us got us involved with a lady called Toshi Hirade whoever in Japan to get sake into the competition we hadn't judged it before so we got more people involved we got some experts involved, we started small in the first competition we had 228 sake we had 5 categories at the time we judged those and we had our winner and over the years we've increased that volume of sake coming through and last year we had 1647 sake oh and now we've got 9 categories the categories are growing and it's really difficult imagine you can win champion sake with 220 odds against 1600 and it's really tough to win champion sake now so the quality is exceptional it really is exceptional and it goes through a real process of judging a judging process which is second to none you can see how all the sake is getting ready this was in Yanagata last year where we did a competition and they're all laid out so we can put those so we can access them quickly when we're doing a competition so what do we do? it's the same process for wine and sake we have journalists, wine buyers, masters of wine and the panel chairs are consistent so we try and keep our panel chairs every year and the judges may change every now and again and every day they will change but our panel chairs say the same and so do our co-chairs it's consistency in sake you might see we know a few of these faces here in the wine industry and there are the sake guys over there and we're quite unusual because it's an export market that sake was came to the idea we see for and that's what we've tried to provide so an export market needs a mixture of different kinds of pallets different taste values people taste differently in different parts of the world people in the west like sweeter things they like salty things it's less of that it's more purity and softness and gentleness, more texture I'm from Yorkshire as you can probably hear so I don't like a lot of texture in my food so when I go to Japan I sometimes struggle because it's all texture based so you can see how we can give a global market or a global view of the global market which means that the new style sake is more better suited to the western pallet it likes flavour, it likes difference we are used to drinking wine, we've been doing it for centuries like the Japanese have been drinking sake for centuries wine is so flavoursome it does the broad spectrum of wine and that's how people analyse it you may notice that we use glasses rather than ceramic cups ceramic cups don't give you aromas so if you put it in a glass you can swirl it and you can get aromas so you can get them full extent of that sake and it really opens up especially the new style where it's got high heat producing coji or flavour, you can taste melon and all sorts of different things just like wine the higher quality sake are just outstanding now we've got a bit of fun, these are three of my senior team you've got Yuji we've got John Gotner on that end and Jennifer, she's a master of wine now we've got them pallets, not ethnicity so Yuji there, Yuji is a Japanese guy guess what pallet he's got he lives in California, he's a western he's lived in California for 35 years he tastes like a westerner, he tastes like an American Jennifer, she's from Canada but she's Chinese based she tastes like a westerner and John Gotner is a western don of sake in Japan he's lived there for 40 years, he's Japanese he tastes like Japanese and what we do is we mix those pallets up with Japanese and western pallets in the same team so nobody can override anything, so it's all about discussion and what you find is that those people that are working together come up with a consensus view a global view and if only our politicians could do that, it would be wonderful, wouldn't it? so we go over this view of a sake on a global sector so this is why exports have been introduced because it's different kinds of sake, more flavoursome sake that's coming out there, which the western pallet likes but also because of the PR that we generate, it's gone crazy in Japan as well when you win champion sake, when you win any of these big awards believe me, it's madness sake judges, we have 16 international judges we have 5 judges at each table so we have associates that start at the bottom you guys don't come at the bottom and work their way up to co-chairs so we judge the sake but we also judge the judges and that's all done by peers you have to be professional, you have to have a WSET qualification to join so if any of you guys just go on our website and have a look you might be able to come and judge with us one day so sake in Japan, now this was really after the tsunami disaster in 2011 when sake couldn't export couldn't leave Japan, couldn't get into Europe they just banned it straight away so what can we do? so we went to Tokyo in 2012 and did a competition there it was a bit of a rush job, we had to do it at the end and we managed to get in we did it at the sakeabrewers offices in Tokyo, it was a bit of a squeeze but we managed it but everybody really enjoyed it all the guys that are obsessed about sake really enjoyed the experience so we started thinking could we do this again and then Hyogo invited us down there four years ago and we did a competition there and it was a revelation all these sake experts that come from around the world I've got Canadians, New Zealanders, Americans, Spanish Italians, they all come and judge with us spread in the gospel of sake so they come to Japan, learn more about Japan really get embedded in Japan, this year we were in Yamagata it was just fabulous, we were there for a week but we saw a Japan that people don't really see out in the countryside with own sense it was beautiful, we had a great time, I was there for three actually but it means that all these people here all these people that go and judge are then going back to their home countries and spreading the gospel about sake and that's creating more interest most of those people involved in either selecting sake restaurants buying sake, putting it on retail shelves so that world is growing so what is also happening, the Wine and Spirit Education Trust W-S-E-T are involved in sake and wine education around the globe a few years ago they launched a sake course which is a level one and level three so you can learn about sake and more and more people are doing this and the real qualification takes a bit of time, it's not expensive I think you can do a level three for about £350 something like that it's about four days, four or five days work, it's a week's work three to five I don't know, something like that so you can come out there with a real qualification and a really deep understanding of sake it's worth doing but now what's also happening is because sake is quite popular over here now is the masters of wine are getting involved they want to know about sake so we've crossed that bridge now when the two global experts on wine are now wanting to know about sake so they're learning so I quite enjoyed this fact when a master of wine comes to me and said could I judge sake so yeah go and do your W-S-E-T level three please and then come back level three is here, master of wine is way up there so that's also spreading the news about sake so that's making it more of a global product now a few years ago we launched a new category sparkling sake, who's ever had sparkling sake? who hands up? great it's a great introduction to sake I was really keen on getting into the competition but Japan was a little bit well it's not really a serious sake but it's an introduction to sake when you're turning 18 you don't all of a sudden go right I'm on the whiskey now my son did suddenly doesn't you don't go straight from doing nothing to the top stuff you don't go from drinking a glass of peregrigia to 5,000 pound bottles of Petrus you just don't do it, you work your way up so if we can engage people by getting in an entry level everybody loves bubbles everybody loves a bit of fiz so if we can engage them by drinking fiz or fizzy sake which is only 22 years old I think it's in a quarter was the first one so they're only 22 years old sparkling sake so if we can engage people and get people involved in sake they will then move up that's nice but what's next? and then you can go through the hanjoza, dyn maes and really what you did with my dagindios to the really serious stuff it's gone crazy in London especially sparkling sake is involved in lots of cocktails all the mixologists are getting involved with it it's just a really light little bit sweeter drink and it's also going really well in Japan the younger element are trying to erail their eyes and this is actually quite good and sometimes it just takes somebody else to tell you you've actually got something that's really good so if we can tell as Westerners over here can tell Japan that their national product is world class beverage they're taking more notice so the younger people are now trying to get into sake trying to everybody I speak to and I know the numbers might not stack up but this is a long game I get them involved in sparkling sake now please try some, it's lovely stuff and then move on promotion PR what do we do? we spread the message of wine and sake all over the world last year our stats were about 1.4 billion impressions across the globe of the international wine challenge so we are widely recognised and it's only because of our judges and the way we judge so we can make lots of things happen for all the entrance and this is some of the numbers 30% sales increase after the champion sake this is some feedback from some of the guys sold the champion sake within two weeks after the announcement which is normally sold in six months it goes crazy but I've got a lovely story there's a guy down in Saga Prefecture who won champion sake in 2011 I think and in Saga there's only four breweries in the town and they have a sake festival every year and about 3,000 people turned up which is about the population of the village and he won champion sake and Toshirade was there and she went down to Saga and spoke to the mayor spoke to the tourist office spoke to everyone who would listen saying make something in this festival when they did the first festival 30,000 people turned up because it won champion sake it was crazy there was no way to stay, no way to park it was just madness the success was unbelievable and I saw him last year at an event I was at and I saw how the festival was going and he said we had 85,000 people there this year and that was what wasn't prosperity to the whole region to the whole place all the hotels fall all the sake brews are also selling their sake as well so if you tell me it's a real thing we're doing the same thing in Fukushima after the disaster that those guys are going through they've had two champion sake now it's just it's changing we went to meet the mayor in Rio a few years ago and he was going to use us as a part to regenerate so that doesn't happen in wine really I said I think I'm so engaged with sake because everybody gets involved it's a real community thing sake being Japan and Japan being sake is so true everybody's involved and that's just something I found fascinating and unique and I love it to bits so the promotion you can see but all our news, when we get our news out it goes out so when our results go out bang, it's everywhere within 24 hours all the countries know it and there is sake increasing all over the place I heard some notes earlier about the reduction in alcohol sales that's a global thing there is a reduction in alcohol sales across the globe in wine, in beer, in everything because we're all trying to be a bit healthier there are peaks there are some other things that are increasing within it but generally alcohol sales are down globally don't be too disheartened, it's a global product I think we're coming to the end now that's it, well thank you I hope I've brought some cheer onto your faces so good evening if not a good afternoon I'm a large speaker and my friend is just helping out I'm not good at figures anyway so you will see a lot of pictures instead well my name is Ria and I call myself a sake promoter and I think passionately every day I'm doing I think about sake when I go to bed and I wake up thinking about sake every day it's feeling like almost alcoholic but not yet and actually I never thought I would be promoting sake like this when I came here 30 years ago so I want to just talk about myself a bit because sake in Japan when I was young unfortunately without disrespect to Saurasam I hated sake because sake was not really good in terms of quality and also in terms of the image to me it was like an old man's working class you know and also not very how do you say sophisticated not for the ladies at all so I rather wanted to stay away so I started a fine wine business and got involved in this country then 13 years ago when as Chris said international wine challenge started launching sake international sake samurai association you might have heard of it because we promoted under the name of sake samurai a lot came to me saying please help to launching the international wine challenge sake competition so you can imagine how I felt you know I'm not really sure if I want to do but when I started tasting sake and I just thought oh my goodness this is no longer the sake I used to know sake has actually transformed itself into the most beautiful sophisticated drink maybe it was 30 years ago things like a ginger came out in the market that was beautiful transformation that's another reason why it is now becoming popular so we started then when I started sorry when I started sake promotion I was the more I tasted sake I just started noticing that sake is not just a drink not just alcohol but something through sake you can get into Japan it's almost like a tunnel it is a spirit of Japanese people it's a philosophy culture, tradition and even economic reasons like a diplomacy it's so concentrated sake has an incredible diplomatic power it's not just a drink so as I started sitting just looking at the sake it doesn't help me so I thought where I can promote sake so I kind of targeted five places let's keep this one first place in order to raise the profile of sake together with saura san at the time the founding chairman of the sake association we got into the parliament and managed to serve sake at the opening of the parliament where queen was there and like that we are now promoting sake at the British Japanese parliamentary group we are then of course we are passionately promoting sake at the embassies of Japan so every time you go to the embassies today minister Okada is coming here to help us we always have a nice sake for the visitors at the event so that helps a lot thank you very much for the embassy and also sake loves money we go to the city of course there are lots of rich and young elite people where we introduce sake at possible events like bankers obviously there are the drinkers of sake sake is kind of expensive side so we always are doing that and obviously as you know sake is such a great hospitality too so we now managing using the beautiful events like a sport event on the left this was Ascot thanks to the Japanese JRA Japanese Racing Association we go to Ascot and instead of champagne sake they actually love it and also as a world cup next year is coming we go to the rugby scene to promote sake for the more inbound attraction people come to Japan please and enjoy sake so that's the scene we are doing and it's this year rugby here this is something I really strongly believe that the reason why we are here for I mean the universities in London this is not the student this is not just the university they are the can I say young world leaders so I go to Oxford, Cambridge and to set up the sake association last time when I did sake course seminar about 40 countries from the different countries and they are really enjoying sake so you know I have to say that the Japanese government doesn't believe promoting into young stars like a student because they don't have money and they get drunk but it's not always a case I really think Japan must put money to the university education because there are also people who has an opinion leaders to the world don't you agree? and as now I'm coming to the sort of a way how I promote sake when I reach those people imagine if I go out when I go outside of London believe it or not many people know about sake many people never had sake or some people have a very wrong impression I mean the bad misconception I call it so what I do is I on purpose present the misconception I have about 5 then turn into the benefit and attraction because people just you know introducing this new thing is quite easy because it's so new here we are but sake has been quite a long time in this country with quite bad image I'm sorry to say so we need to rectify it to move forward that's how I feel we should be doing first thing I always do is the strength of sake if you give the sake to somebody who hasn't know about sake they will come like this they always think sake is so strong just like a spirit perhaps the image of drinking sake in a small cup makes them to think in that way do you know why we drink sake in such a small cup some students said maybe Japanese is so small but well it's true we don't have such enzymes to digest alcohol but the reason is that Saora-san explained first sake 2,000 years ago about sake was made to offer to the god to protect us with the gratification and share amongst the people so sake was made to bring people together pouring for you and he pours for me back so it's like a small sort of rituals to drink together not to drink by yourself so that was another reason why we are drinking in a small cup the other thing is like Chris mentioned sake nowadays good sake has a more aroma you can enjoy but in the past sake didn't have any sort of aroma to enjoy it so that's why I think it was okay with a cup even without enjoying the nose but anyway what I wanted to say is sake is not that strong it's not alcoholic horror it is about 14, 15, 16 slightly higher than wine so I keep saying no this is just like wine slightly higher but drink just like wine next one is misconception again temperature all the people all the generation like me who had sake before here especially thinks that sake has to be drunk warm or hot because sake is very unusual drink that sake can be enjoyed at different temperature say even on the rock you can put the ice in it or even warm like a 55 at maximum don't boil it but likewise if you have a one bottle let's say enjoy very too then room temperature and warm it up you will never notice this is the same sake it changes the sensationally change the character so you should try it so that's another thing and so you have a different way of drinking that is actually sake daiginjo cup made by reader glass so you can enjoy the glass with the nose the another misconception which I'm going to do is food pairing this is the big thing if everybody started understanding it sake is not only just a Japanese food but it goes beyond it we have a very famous saying called sake doesn't get in fight with food sake wa'r ywoli wo'r erabanai it has been said for long time I think this is kind of reflecting Japanese philosophy you know peace loving it doesn't get aggressive like wine because wine imagine wine has a turning and also high acidity these two are the ones which tend to fight that's why somuriaise has to work hard not to prevent it but the sake is really forgiving liquid so you can enjoy with a different thing that's what jihashisan mentioned that jay foodo, the new organization is promoting these ideas and I show you a couple of things in this country it will work if you have a chance to try with the sake you know champagne walk up people say but the sake is incredibly beautiful and also smoke salmon oyster to die for you can even put the sake into that and just swallow at one go it is really really good we've been trying all the time she's actually the expert for promoting oyster and sake and I like bongole making by myself so I use sake when I cook the bongole and also drink with a fresh sake so I hope you try many people think sake only goes with the fish but that's wrong too we have incredibly refreshing sparkling sake which was perfect we did the master of wine tasting together fish on the chips and sake this is really cool at the moment and the calamari again it reflects remove the oiliness and the rich beef with a little bit aged big sake and parmaham is always so nice because salty food goes sake very well we went to India the other day all together and promote sake with Indian food it was fantastic so really with a confident Indian food and wine is a very difficult match as you know but try with sake how you feel and obviously cheese sake fermented is a good match and even with the chocolate today we are having dessert sake like that if there is any chocolate please try with so another thing is sake is not just only one kind we have lots of different types of sake which is perhaps even too many in my opinion but it is more than wine a bit too complicated and for example classification in terms of the wine we have a grand crew, premier crew, village table sake unfortunately Japan doesn't have such a straight forward way but instead they have like a junmai daiginjo ginjo honjozo please do not ask what is what I kind of sympathize you know that unless you know the name you would not know what sake character is but this is something if you love sake you have to work a little harder to remember the character also it is not class but also we have the way we make it we have again sparkling sake cloudy gori sake also aged sake today if you go to the tasting after this we are serving 31 year old sake which normally sake doesn't age well but you know there are some sake which can live long so you mustn't go back without tasting that it is very expensive too and likewise there are so many and this is almost like a bonus I really if I can promote sake without thinking of the organization I will straight away tell you sake is so good for your skin so good for your health because sake has an amino acid which more than any other drink and there are lots of saying about this sake is king of the medicine since long long time so you know relax on sake and I hope you enjoy sake today and for the rest of your life thank you before I explain how to get to the sake I'd just like to thank all five speakers for fascinating to us through the different perspectives of sake so thank you so much for coming on