Dassai Blue 23 Junmai Daiginjo Yamada Nishiki

Dassai is a well-established sake brewery in Yamaguchi, Japan. Dassai Blue is an expansion of the brand into the U.S. where earlier this year they opened a large, ambitious new brewery in Hyde Park, New York.

Although built upon the experience of Dassai, the new brewery is creating its own line of sake, and today we will be trying two of them, Type 50 and Type 23. Both are Junmai Daigingo, typically the most expensive grade of sake, which means they are brewed using rice that has been very well polished and include no additives or additional alcohol. The number on each of the sakes refers to how polished the rice is that is used to make it. The rice for Type 50 has been polished down to 50% of its original size (50% is the minimum requirement for a sake to be Daigingo). Type 23 uses rice polished down to 23% of its original size and as a result is naturally more expensive. Both are currently made with rice imported from Japan, but there are plans to begin using American rice in the near future. All other aspects of production are built upon meticulous Japanese practices but are done at the new brewery. Let’s open them up and see how they compare to sake imported from Japan.