Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Toronto Gets Serious About Sake: The Ontario Spring Water Sake Company

New to Toronto’s Distillery District is a micro sake brewery called the Ontario Spring Water Sake Company. As I walked around the Distillery District on a nice Saturday afternoon, it was the traditional bundle of rice outside the establishment that got my attention. That location used to be one of the area’s many art galleries, so I knew this was something different. When I saw the sign above the double-doors, it looked very bland, almost like a government office sign. However, even my sometimes-nonobservant brain very quickly registered that the word “sake” was in the name and it couldn’t have been more than a second before I started heading towards the door with a spring of enthusiasm in my step.

I walked in, not knowing what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised. There is a “micro-brewery” set up inside, along with a tasting bar and a single refrigerated “counter” holding bottles for retail sale. I looked at the blackboard behind the tasting bar and, novice that I am, tried in vain to make good sense of what it was trying to tell me. Thankfully a gentleman named Ken, who is actually the President of the company, offered to tell me about the sake and about the company.

This is a proper, traditional sake brewing company that, I think, borders on artisanal. There is a cedar koji room to begin the sake fermentation, and a number of stainless steel fermentation vats simliar to what you’d see at a microbrewery pub for small-batch production of beer. The brew master, Ken told me, is an experienced master from Japan and everything is done with utmost care: two of the three main lines of sake being produced (Nama Nama and Teion Sakura) are unpasteurized to provide the best flavors, with one of them (Teion Sakura) fermented at lower temperatures to “force” the yeast to produce more interesting aromas and flavors, the sake is bottled via gravity filtration rather than mechanically pumped and filtered, and indeed everything is done by hand. The one product line that is single-pasteurized as opposed to the majority of retail sake that is double-pasteurized, is the Nama Cho line. All of the sake is junmai, without any added distilled alcohol. The water is sourced from a spring around Huntsville, chosen because it is soft enough and has a good taste profile to begin with, and approximates what you might get from a good spring in Japan. The rice is California rice milled down to about 60% of its original size, removing the outer proteins and putting this right on the doorstep of junmai ginjo territory.

However, it was the Shiboritate that really indicated to me how serious the Ontario Springwater Sake Company truly is about making the best and most interesting sake possible. Shiboritate is just-pressed sake. Literally, a new batch of sake was being pressed by workers in the brewing area, and this just-pressed sake would be available at the tasting bar only – and only today while the sake was being pressed. Ken explained very briefly that this was available in such small volumes that they can’t bottle it for retail sale – they just have enough for the tasting bar. It is straight from the press, undiluted, unpasteurized, and unfiltered.

At $10 for a “large” serving size, it wasn’t cheap, but entirely worth the experience. While I know rice wines and sakes are usually enjoyed ganbei/kanpai style in Asia – which means bottoms-up, down the whole little wine/sake glass in one gulp – I wanted to enjoy the nuances of this sake and I sipped it as I would a western grape-made table wine. The nose on this shiboritate sake was, to me, unmistakably mozarella cheese. It was a soft, mellow, and warm aroma that literally brought me back to the kitchen and I could immediately imagine myself grating mozarella to make my own pizza. On the palate, however, it was an entirely different story. I tasted a prominent mushroom note, soft and mellow. This wasn’t a fruity sake, per se. It was a mushroom note, portabello I would say, and a very pleasant one. The sake was smooth, soft, and eminently enjoyable on every level.

I liked it so much that I bought small 300ml bottles of Nama Nama, Teion Sakura, and a truly limited-edition Demondori Musume. The Demondori Musume is the company’s very first batch of sake, and there is an interesting story behind it. They started it before the brew master arrived from Japan, and they dropped the temperature of the sake too early. In fact, they thought they had killed the yeast and ruined the batch. But when the brew master arrived, she (yes the brewmaster is a woman) wrapped the fermentation tanks with blankets and gently heated the tanks from below. She rescued the batch and the result was a unique sake. Remember I mentioned earlier that lower temperatures yield more interesting flavors? That is, apparently, what happened with this first batch.

You could call the Demondori Musume a fluke. By all rights, this should have been a ruined batch, but by luck and skill, it was rescued from the brink and resulted in something different and good. Considering the story behind this, and the fact that this is the very first batch from what promises to be a wonderful local sake company, I had to try some and have a bottle to save as a collector item.

At $12-$15 for 300ml, the sake isn’t cheap. You can get a 750ml bottle of Hakutsuru Junmai sake at the LCBO for just under $10 – indeed, this is my preferred cooking sake and it’s good enough to drink on its own too. You can get 300ml sake of other makes and types at the LCBO for $6-$9. If you really want to push it, you can get 1.5L of sake for about $19, but this stuff might as well be paint-thinner. Compare this against $72 for the 1.8L bottles at the Ontario Spring Water Sake Company. No, the sake from the Ontario Spring Water Sake Company isn’t cheap, but if the shiboritate is indicative of what their entire product lineup is like, then I think this is going to be really nice sake that will be very much worth the cost.

I hope this place maintains its “micro brewery” nature, keeping quality as its primary focus. Having just opened to the public on April 29, this place is brand new. I think there is great potential here – clearly Ken, who founded the popular fast-food sushi Bento Nouveau thinks so too – but I just hope that quality, authenticity, and craftsmanship remain paramount. I hope this doesn’t become the sake equivalent of Bento Nouveau.

In any case, if you like sake or have an interest in sake, drop by the Ontario Spring Water Sake Company at the Distillery District this spring or summer and try something at the tasting bar. Maybe buy a bottle or two of something to take home.

In the meantime, I’ll be sure to let you know in a future post how the Nama Nama, Teion Sakura, and most importantly, Demondori Musume shape up!