Today I am drinking at an izakaya.
It is a restaurant called "Ikkyu" (horse meat).
We had horse sashimi and hiyaoroshi, a special sake for the occasion.
The aroma is of sweet rice. The taste is also sweet with a tangy finish. It is unusual for hiyaoroshi.
Goes well with horse sashimi.
Juicy like an apple.
The flavor is not raw, but rounded, which is typical of hiyaoroshi.
It has a light texture and is very easy to drink despite its syrupy flavor.
It has a light texture and is very easy to drink. It disappears quickly and easily.
It doesn't get heavy even if you keep drinking it.
You can drink it all the time.
Very good.
Second drink with an old friend
The same Hitachi-Nishiki as the first glass of Morishima.
Slightly sharper than Morishima
Overall, the taste is light, perhaps due to the Hitachi-nishiki.
Bitter aftertaste is very tantalizing!
We had a casual chat over yakitori, motsu nimono and other standard izakaya menu items.
and chatting about other trivial matters.
I'm sure there were many things I wanted to talk about besides my recent situation, such as complaints about work, health issues, and so on,
But these things became unimportant, and we just kept on drinking.
In a sense, the ultimate healing time.
At Hisago
This is the first sake I've seen.
The yeast is listed as SYS, so I googled it and got a lot of hits.
It is an All Ibaraki sake made with Hitanishiki, the only rice suitable for sake brewing produced in Ibaraki Prefecture, and using SYS, a yeast produced in the prefecture.
The toji worked at a pottery kiln in Aizu, then moved to Miyazumi Meizumi Brewery in Sharaku, then to Kunimare Brewery in Hokkaido, and finally to the current Aoki Brewery. I guess sake brewers have many different careers in their backgrounds.
The taste was better than I expected. It was very tasty. There is nothing unique about the taste, but the balance of aroma, sweetness, and umami is superb. It's a gorgeous sake.