 My name is Bo Temkin, but after a film class in college where we saw the battleship Bo Temkin, I became Bo Temkin for the next four years. Somebody once hurt my feelings for a moment. They called me a name. They said that I was like a sake savant. In a meeting, I thought about Dustin Hoffman and Rain Man, and I started going, Chumai Ginjo, Daiginjo, Hanjozo, category, and I was hurt. I was like, they said, no, no, no, it's not like that. She said, you have a brain for sake. So this brain for sake, sort of like Bryant, kicked out a book, co-wrote a book, at least in 2006. But what I'm working on right now is my newsletter that I love to just get funky with. And I knew I was going to be hearing about food today, and I know a little bit about sake, so I thought I'd combine the two, food as sake. When was the last time that you ate booze, a good solid square meal of alcohol, a big heaping portion of giggle juice? And no, not your watermelon with a hole filled with vodka does not count. Neither is that jello shot, nor does your rum cake. Nope, those do not constitute a solid booze-filled dinner. Alcohol, more specifically sake, is the original fueled-up meal that brought field fermentation to the farmer. Rice is and was a three-meal deal in Japan. No other elements of an alcoholic beverage can lay claim to this necessity status. Do you think ancient Germans, sorry, history buffs, ate bowls of fermented hops and barley for lunch? How about those ancient French? Again, apologies, history geeks. Do you think they hunkered down over brimming bowls of fermented grapes for dinner? In all likelihood, the answer is nuh-uh. But wait, hold that image. See a coarse clay bowl filled with a mush, resembling oatmeal. Look further and see a group of farmers sitting around a large wooden bucket filled with the same mash, and guess what? They are eating sake in its most ancient and raw form. Indeed, the genesis of sake, nihonshu, or the wine of Japan, was not a crystal-clear liquid that is best served chilled in fancy barglasses. No, rather, sake in its oldest carnation was a 3% to 5% alcohol-based bowl of rice that required looking away and a hefty appetite. Sake was a meal. Sake was food. It was not simply an alcohol, doing that wonderful magic that booze is associated with. Sake was functional. It was a sustenance. It was necessary, and oh yeah, it got good, hard-working people buzzed. Like most all things, sake can be traced back to ancient China. As this is where rice had its ground zero. For the sake of speaking about sake in its modern context, Japan has been, and continues to be, the torch-bearing nation for the starchy libation. Roughly 2,500 years ago, wet rice cultivation began on the island of Japan, in those cultivating rice for the first recipients of this fermented wonder that was said to have been used to liquor up ancient beasts so that it could be felled by mere mortals. Farming was a communal occupation, and rice was the most communal bonds. It was a food source so valued that at one time it was even traded as a currency. But more importantly, rice brought people together. It brought folks together to chew and spit. Yes, the earliest recorded history of sake spoke about a form of a brew that was created by chewing rice and spitting the gob into a wooden bucket, kuchikami no sake, or chewed in the mouth sake. Those glorious farmers somehow realized if they chewed the rice and spat it out into wooden tubs or buckets that the enzymes in their mouths would break the long-chain starch molecules into a glucose and then this glucose would sit in the bucket for about a week and allow airborne yeasts to propagate and ferment that glucose into a wonderful alcohol. Bingo, a meal and a party in one. And that is indeed what happened. Villages used religious occasions to get groups together to chew and spit en masse to create a large batch of saliva sake. My words, not theirs. Usually the village leader would start the process and the rest of the villagers would join the spit-a-thon. Then, and thankfully, some smart and perhaps germaphobic farmer said, I'm sick of drinking Yoshi's spit. And suggested that he would prefer the ricey spit of a virgin. And so began the next phase of sake in its oldest form, Bijinshu, beautiful girl sake that basically was a virginal masterpiece. Yes, the village virgins would all gather and chew rice as a team descended from the gods. Then they would release their globby glory into the wind to find a warm, gooey home in the bottom of a very receptive receptacle. Pure heaven, a sustenance so dreamy that people no longer cringed at the thought of Yoshi's spit. A product so marketable that Anheiser Bush is considering making a beer called Bud Virgin. Yes, sake became sexy as well as savory. But let's not kid ourselves. The sake that we were speaking about still resembled a gruel that was chunky and funky. How did they eat this fermented food source? Originally with hands in disposable Purell towelettes. Then yet another enterprising farmer who was tired of drinking, excuse me. Then yet another enterprising farmer who was tired of trying to drink the good stuff at the bottom of the bowl through the mush thought about a fixing a straw to the bottom side. In this scenario, the heavy mush remained on the top and the heavenly juice sat in the bottom, easily extracted with pursed lips and a sucking sound. For those having a hard time picturing this, think about your last 7-Eleven slurpee or slushie at the movies. Ice on top, good stuff on bottom. And all apologies for mentioning 7-Eleven in this room on this day. Fifth century in Japan saw a very unique vessel shaped like an hourglass with a larger bowl on top and a small bowl on bottom with an attached straw, heavy mash on top in the fluid running down into the lower bowl with straw. Again, for those having difficulty seeing this image, think of a ridiculously large green tube of alcohol on Bourbon Street. Ah, but sixth century Japan saw the advent of a bowl of sake again. Just a bowl of fermented gruel that required the use of long pinchers almost like modern day eyebrow tweezers to lift the chunks of sake out to be eaten and the bowl to be tipped and sift. Very civilized, very sixth century. The concept of fine dining has come a very long way since bowls of fermented gruel shared amongst farmers and village virgins or has it.