The Sake Handbook
by Alex
When I recently decided to bite the bullet and get to the bottom of sake tasting and nomenclature I purchased a copy of The Sake Handbook by John Gauntner. Even in the Internet Age, I reasoned, a sole-authored guidebook would be more useful than endless googling through Wikipedia pages, right? Sadly, after a month with this book, I’m not so sure…
The goal and format The Sake Handbook is a good idea — this is no coffee table book of beautiful pictures of sake bottles. Instead it introduces the reader to sake through the brewing process, explaining a welter of names and methods slowly and logically as it takes you through the production process. Subsequent chapters take you through Japanese tasting terms, different kinds of sake, drinking vessels, and so forth. These chapters successfully keep the reader from entering Overwhelm Mode by repeatedly defining Japanese terms when used (a glossary is also included, which is good). The prose is clear, although it also seems repetitive and padded — I’m not sure if the author was trying to lengthen this already-short book, or simply an attempt to make the volume welcoming to readers. Often, however, it just makes it hard to find information. The chapter on Ginjoshu, for instance, doesn’t actually explain what Ginjoshu is until you are a page and seven paragraphs in to it. Sometimes authors write forgetting how little their readers know compared to them — it seems like this might be the case here, where long digressions and reflections get in the way of serious information. If anything, much of the text could be reduced to helpful tables and charts which would orient the reader to topics like brewing method, taste terms, and so forth.
It get worse. Some of the chapters of this book are downright unhelpful. The section on ‘collecting sake labels’ is not actually about collecting sake labels but a discussion of the most common kanji characters that appear on sake labels. Readers searching for tips on getting labels off bottles, descriptions of how collectors organize their collections, etc. will have to look elsewhere. The chapter on sake bars in Japan and wholesalers in the US — 37 pages — will not be of use to most readers. Perhaps the intended audience is anglophone expats in Japan? At any rate for those of us in the rest of the world this section is of little use — the list of wholesalers in my state is already out of date. Honestly: who needs a phonebook when you have Google?
The most egregious problem with the book is the main section: the 100 pages of recommended sake to try. This section consists of pictures of sake labels and one paragraph reviews of the sake in question. This is the expert, value-added core of the book — it could be used as a guide for first-timers looking to try different sakes, or to read about sakes they have tried at a restaurant or bar. Unfortunately, the sakes are organized by the geographical region of their brewery, from north to south. It’s ridiculous. This essentially means it is impossible to browse the list on the basis of any of the criteria a reader would actually use: alphabetical listings of brands, types of sake, flavors, suggested lists of sakes for tastings, and so forth. The index does list brands, so the book is not a total waste, but it is certainly a disappointment.
Let’s face it: compared to the relatively well-written Wikipedia page on sake and the many brewery website out there, Gauntner’s book falls short. If you are not good at using the Internet and want to learn more about sake, it will do the job. But at base the book’s value proposition falls short: despite assertions to the contrary, you can beat free — but in order to do so you need to curate information better than this. A useful book, but I have to admit I’m a little disappointed that I bought it.