Nama season is here! Every spring, sake breweries release fresh-brewed bottles of unpasteurized sake in super-limited amounts. We are super lucky to get access to these, and have gotten as much as we can for you! Spring Nama often disappears quickly, so grab them while you can.

About the Sake

Fukucho is brewed by Miho Imada. She's a woman in the sake world who holds a rare position of being both president and brewmaster of her brewery. (In Japan, these two important jobs are normally performed by different people.) In short, she's a badass. Combine the great resume with her pioneering and skillful sake making style, and you can see why we are such big fans of her. Imada-san's "Moon on the Water" is made with Yamada Nishiki rice (the King of Sake Rice!) which is delicately milled down to 50% before brewing. 

The nose of "Moon on The Water" Nama shows pineapple and banana, along with the characteristic fresh floral and fruity headiness of namazakes. On the palate, this Junmai Ginjo expresses elegant and rich layers of fruit, as well as spices including anise and peppercorn. The acidity is nicely pronounced and lively in this Nama. Very fresh, very alive!

More on Unpasteurized Sake

Unpasteurized sake is a special thing. It's often lively, bold and punchy, texturous, and packing heaps of heady aromatics. The vast majority of sake gets pasteurized twice to keep it stable and unspoiled so that it can rest easy on store shelves, or in our cupboards at home awaiting drinking. This is the industry norm. An amount far less than that sees one single pasteurization. A lot of the smaller breweries that Fulamingo carries follow the single, in-bottle pasteurization protocol. An even far lesser amount sees no pasteurization at all. These rare birds of sake are called NAMA, or NAMAZAKE. Nama basically means "raw" or unpasteurized.

If Nama is so special, then why don't more breweries make sake this way? For one, leaving sake unpasteurized risks spoilage. Namas need to be kept cool in order to guarantee that unintended microbiological processes don't set in. (Refrigeration is the best way to keep Namas safe from this. A cool cellar is second best, and room temperature or hotter for a prolonged time is asking for bad funk.) The second reason Nama isn't more widely produced and available is that the bold aromatics and lively textures can be downright overpowering for lots of sake fans. This is especially true when we consider the elegant, understated nature of delicately balanced sake. In Japan, for many, Nama is considered a novelty, albeit a novelty to be celebrated and enjoyed, but novel nonetheless. It's kind of like Beaujolais Nouveau for wine fans. Fresh wine is fun, but every winemaker who wants to show you what they can really do will have you wait until the wine ages an appropriate amount before it gets bottled. That being said, sake is absolutely not wine, and the Nouveau analogy although apt doesn't quite account for the broad deliciousness that Nama sake can provide for us, even year-round.