Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Ontario Springwater Sake Company’s Teion Sakura

I finally cracked open my bottle of Teion Sakura sake from the Ontario Spring Water Sake Company. Teion Sakura is one of the company’s standard lines of unpasteurized sake. At a simplified level (perfect for a sake neophyte like myself), Teion Sakura is the fruity sake. It is brewed at a lower temperature, and I’m sure there are other differences in the way the brewmaster has arranged the production of Teion Sakura, but the end result is indeed a very different sake from anything else I have yet tried.

Teion Sakura is an absolute joy to behold. To say that it is fruity is both correct and yet incomplete. The sake is fragrant, and on the nose it has an indistinct general fruitiness. I can’t identify what particular notes it holds, but when tasting it, my impression is one of peaches, apricots and cranberry. It’s not directly there, but those are the notes and sensations that I perceive in the drink. It is a very smooth, refined sake with a long, sustained aftertaste of what I consider the cranberry note.

The first time I opened up a book about sake, I read in the introduction that the world of sake is every bit as varied and complex as the world of grape-based wines. It was not until I started trying the sakes from the Ontario Spring Water Sake Company (OSWSC from here on out) that I truly experienced it firsthand. Thus far I have tried 3 of their sakes, with the Teion Sakura being the first mainstream production sake. All 3 have been wonderful, each enjoyable and with a distinctly different personality and experience from the others.

I’ll never be able to buy another bottle of Demondori Mesume, but the Teion Sakura gives me confidence that the OSWSC will be producing great sakes for years to come. I am at once very impressed and very happy. I am impressed with the quality of work that OSWSC puts out. I am happy to have discovered them.

Now if only I lived closer to the Distillery District, I could get more of their sake more often… or drop by for some of that great first-press sake.