One of the really nice things about sakés is that, unlike wine, even the best sakés we can buy in Canada really aren’t that expensive. I’m sure that in Japan you could spend an arm and a leg on a ridiculously high quality bottle at a fancy restaurant or factory, but not here.
These are two more bottles I picked up in Toronto (see Part 1 of the Toronto Saké Hunt). My method for this saké hunt was look up all the Junmai Daigingo sakés and other interesting sakés (namas, award-winning Junmais, etc.) and go from LCBO to LCBO in the city to track them down. This took more than half a day. And I didn’t drink a drop while doing it! My bag rattled with bottles and I didn’t even get carded, which either has something to do with the bags under my eyes, or the fact that I was a white girl buying about $50-$80 worth of saké at each shop in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. I did get some funny looks as I packed the bottles into my backpack, though.
I found the bottles I was looking for that I’d researched in advance, but often the stores would have other bottles that seemed interesting that hadn’t been listed on the website. I should say that I don’t read Japanese, so I’d read the labels on the shelves and any English on the bottles and look for the words Junmai Daigingo and look to see if they’d won any awards. As far as I know, the award that bottle on the right won could be for spelling in elementary school. But I figured I’d give it a try.
The other up side of saké is that small bottles like this are common, so even if the saké is expensive, at 320mL, it’s not.
Both of these were very nice sakés. The one on the left was fruitier and with a bit more alcoholic bite. The award-winner was smoother and softer. Translations of the labels, please? I can’t even give you the English names, so you’ll have to take this photo and go to the LCBO website to hunt them down. Worth it? Yes.
Serve cold, refrigerate after opening, drink responsibly, etc.
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