Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France: A Secret Sake Restaurant in Tokyo
Wine Terroirs : Wine discovery, wine tasting and vineyards in France .
Sanemura-san (right) with Rie Itoh
Somewhere in Tokyo
Thanks to Yoshi whom we met with his girlfriend Erika at the
near Okachimachi, we went to the most minimalist restaurant of Tokyo you can think of,
and this was a wonderful experience. This is a very different world from the popular down-to-earth tachinomya and other casual izakaya. This type of almost-secret restaurant is everything-Tokyo too, a city where gastronomy reigns unchallenged under all forms.
The owner of the venue is also the cook there, and he has been scouring the world through his travels, taking recipes and sourcing rare artisanal products in the way. His restaurant is the ultimate result of this search for perfection.
Sake is on the front seat at Cotyuu, with artisan-type of sake often made with the no-additives kimoto sakemaking process. At Cotyuu, you find the different cuvées of 5 distinct sake breweries which have been selected by the Ma?tre des lieux, and given the way he sources his ingredients in the kitchen, I'm pretty confident about any sake you can find here.
To find the restaurant, you must know the exact address, there is no way to guess it when you pass the modern building along this boulevard in central Tokyo. Once in the place, you find yourself at one end of a long room with a wall on the right and a long table on the left, the kitchen being behind the sliding door on the side.
As the restaurant owners prefer the word of mouth to find their customers, I'll not display the address, but if you look hard, you should find it.
The lone table-counter at Cotyuu
There's something in the austere, temple-like minimalist simplicity of the room that inspires you : you're here obviously for a food experience where no distracting detail is needed. Just take a chair among the 8 seats along the table, and be ready. The kitchen is on your right, you'll see the sliding door open slightly from time to time, this is the signal that some dish is ready, and Rie, the waitress, will walk to the sliding door and grab the dishes. Once during the evening maybe, Sanemura-san will spend a few minutes outside the kitchen to chat with the customers.
Cotyuu opened a few months ago, in october 2011, and it has since a steady flow of visitors attracted by the refineness of the dishes and the sake selection. When we arrived there, there were already a couple near whom we sat, then a New-Zealand expat who looked like a regular came in, then a 60-something Japanese who seemed to be a business man originally from Osaka and who had the typical warmth and communicative enjoyment of the people of Osaka. We chatted joyously together__I mean B. chatted, that's the trouble when you don't understand anything, you're left mostly in the dark, except for a few translated excerpts, so I just took comfort in the general feel that I sensed through the exchange...
Let the feast begin...
We were given two simple menus printed on paper, one for the food, one for the sake, and helped by the young woman who was behind the table (and B.'s knowledge of Japanese and of Kanji), we ordered small dishes as well as jugs of sake, each of us ordering a different sake for a better coverage of the venue's cellar. When I say cellar, it's a virtual cellar because the 1,8-liter sake bottles are stocked in the cabinet running all along the wall behind the waitress. Asked about the storage conditions, she says that these quality sake don't spoil when stored and opened even at room temperature.
Here are a few of the delicate sake we had (written down by B., I'm not sure the names are complete, this doesn't speak much to me) :
__ Hioki zakura tokubetsu junmai (polished 55 %), from the region of Tottori.
__ Take tsuru junmai, from Hiroshima.
__ Tenten Musume, from Tottori region too.
__ Sui Gyu, from the region of Nara.
Squid with hot sauce
The squid with its chili sauce was pairing quite well with the sake, although I'll be unable to tell you which one we had at this point (taking notes sometimes spoils the pleasure of the moment).
Before that, we had crushed burdock of sesame seed paste (500 Y) and also specially marinated salsifies. We had some smoked macquerel (800 Y), the fish was very lightly smoked and had a very enjoyable texture, with a feel closer to a very tender dry meat than to what you would expect for smoked fish. After that, some sort of thin green pancakes cut into small squares (I don't remember which dish it was). We had also a small bowl of fermented oysters swimming in their own sauce, that the cook sourced from a restaurant in Hong Kong where it's made the very traditional way, which requires care and time as they macerate slowly in salt. We're said that all the oyster sauce found in the shops is a standardized product with lots of bad stuff and additives added. The taste here is indeed very concentrated and intense, it feels like urchins meat, it's very onctuous. I'm not an expert in oyster sauce but that's good. Then we had an Omelette du Mont Saint-Michel (1000 Y), which had a bigger size so that we could fill up in addition to relish the refined foods.
There were some 20 dishes to choose from, all very refined and made with top ingredients, most costing between 450 Y and 700 Y and a few at 1000 or 1200 Y. Expect to pay about 10 000 Y (about 100 EUR) for two, including several jugs of sake.
Cuvées made from different local rice varieties
Here is a line of sake made by the Ota brewery (I think it's in the ), each of these cuvées having been made with a different local rice variety. Apart from the variety difference, the sakemaking has been exactly the same, using the same quality of water, meaning that you taste here the unique characteristics of the variety and possibly of the physical environment of the rice paddies. We were told during the brewery visits that the vintage gives its own expression in sake too, because for example if the rice grain suffered from heat or drought, it will not absorb the water the same way than on a normal season and the fermentation will yield different results.
The traditional sake heater
All the sake here is lightly heated with this traditional water-bath heater in which metal mugs containing sake reach gently the desired temperature. Thermometers help check when it's time to take out the mugs and pour the sake into the small jugs.
The Japanese have
different serving temperatures, from cold to hot, each with its own Japanese name. Nuru-kam (lukewarm - 40/45 ° C) being I think the favorite temperature, at least during the cold season. See
listing the different serving temperatures for sake. Note that the "cold" sake is served in a cup in its wooden masu and that "warm" sake is served into these nice frail Japanese jugs.
We both prefer drink sake at room temperature, but we still enjoy the lukewarm option, especially that it cools down rapidly when you don't drink it straight away. Warm sake is making a comeback these days as people rediscover its vertues, but it is said that for a sake to be enjoyable warm, it has to have certain quality features first. Read
where it is said that kimoto sake (the equivalent for sake of natural wine), fares better in front of the temperature challenge, as the natural elements in the wine behave better on the tasting feel than when the sake has been manipulated with additives. This page is published by the
in the Fukushima Prefecture, which we visited 4 years ago. Daishichi is also one of the rare breweries (shuzo) to follow the natural kimoto sakemaking method.
4 cuvées of sake that you won't find at the next Konbini
Here are the 4 cuvées made with the natural-sakemaking kimoto method, the two on the left come from the Take-Tsuru Shuzo in the region of Hiroshima, the two on the right, or at least one, come from Suiriu Shuzo, in the Tottori region. These sake are made by the two Toji who are doing a lot to promote the kimoto sake in Japan, as there's a renewed interest these days in a sakemaking using no additives. These Toji are Mr Ichikawa from Take-Tsuru (Hiroshima) and Mr Kato from Suiriu Shuzo. To remind what kimoto is, it's the traditional way of mixing a natural-yeast culture with koji and rice, it's a lot of hard work as it requires doing it by hand for a long time before the fermentation starts, but this is the way sake makers would do before the biotech industry produced the lab yeasts and other additives (like the lactic-acid additive) to speed up the process. According to John Gauntner of Sake-World, the trick to add lactic acid to speed the whole thing was discovered in 1911 and it took 10 years for the industry to catch up, with now virtually all the breweries using the additives technology. Read this
on sake making, where you'll also learn that Daishichi in Fukushima has been the first to dare brew a ginjo and then a daiginjo with a kimoto yeast starter. It is very interesting to notice that in this question, wine and sake have been on a roughly parallel course in Europe and in Japan in terms of changing ways to make the thing, and that is even more interesting to learn that a few inspired and daring sakemakers are actively reintroducing the traditional method, giving way to more pronounced flavors and life feel in the sake. Having been given the chance to drink also newly-pressed, unpasteurized sake of this type, I can tell you that there's a future in this direction if people are given the chance to taste both ways of sake...
Thank you to Sanemura-san and Rie for having opened a new window to us on sake and fine food.
Shitamachi atmosphere in Yanaka, near Nippori (Tokyo)
Cotyuu : . If you read Japanese, you'll learn more about the sake Shuzo in Tottori as well as about the fermented oysters made in a small village of continental China.
Cotyuu : . Note the pic icon of Sanemura-san, a 1954 picture by Cartier-Bresson showing a young boy rue Mouffetard carrying home two bottles of wine...(see a
of this picture)
by Thimothy Sullivan
on how the Daishichi brewery (which is located 60 km from the failed N plant), is coping with the situation
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&(3人收藏)Mathieu Legrand Orbite Polaire MLG_1100_A的尺寸多大啊？_百度知道
Mathieu Legrand Orbite Polaire MLG_1100_A的尺寸多大啊？
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系统奖励15（财富值+成长值）+难题奖励20（财富值+成长值）
我有更好的答案
不算表冠在内表盘直径是42毫米。
表壳直径42mm。
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我们会通过消息、邮箱等方式尽快将举报结果通知您。Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France: A Vignerons Barbecue
Wine Terroirs : Wine discovery, wine tasting and vineyards in France .
Laurent & No?lla with a friend
, LoirePhoto story - First festive gathering at la Boudinerie :
and Laurent Saillard invited friends, among whom many artisan vignerons, for a barbecue and lots of great wines (and artisanal beer). These vignerons sharing the same love for real wines often meet for such heartening lunches or dinners, and this happens all around France. Sometimes, these gatherings take place on the side of bigger meetings and wine fairs, jumping on the opportunity that they're around together, sometimes like here, just for the fun to be together and celebrate. Of what I heard, this is always casual and relaxed, the food is great, and as the vignerons bring their wines, you drink lots of good stuff, some of it not even on the market.Here, this was also the opportunity to celebrate a friend's birthday : Arnaud Ehrart's birthday.People began arriving at the winery at noon, lots of familiar faces and a few whom I met for the first time. Joe Dressner, Denyse and his children were there too, as well as several other Americans. I spoke to Sam, a close friend of Arnaud who is from Mexico, and who worked along with James in Arnaud's early ventures. I spoke also with Caribou who with Julie created La Mise, the small-but-hot natural-wine gathering which takes place yearly in the south of France. I also discovered that many vignerons had hidden skills, like they know how to sharpen knives, cut muttons and things like that...
Thierry pouring to Arnaud
Arnaud Ehrart was the hero of the day. Arnaud is the man behind , a now-closed iconic restaurant which was opened in 2003 in Red Hook, Brooklyn. This Alsace native introduced the natural wines on the restaurant scene there, in New York, which was not an easy business then even if the wines were already imported in the U.S.. Arnaud left the big city after several successful years in his restaurant, for a different life near Puerto Rico where he dives and enjoys the sea. He and
(who set up , another Brooklyn restaurant dealing with natural wines) are close friends and they have a lot of complicity together.Arnaud is a bit anxious these days because a big storm (class 3, 120-knots winds as what was known when this barbecue took place) is on its way in the Carribean and he is having his boat moved because of this.
Arnaud Ehrart, Catherine and Thierry
The guests keep arriving, at one point, it's Joe Dressner (here in the background on left), Denyse and their children who joined. Joe wrote a few words
about this Arnaud celebration in the Loir et Cher [My God....is 360 Van Brunt still closed?]....
Fixing the boudin (blood sausage) in la Boudinerie
Each of us was welcomed upon arrival with a T shirt at his/her size with the logo of La Boudinerie, which is the name of the farm where the winery is sitting. The word boudinerie comes from the French word boudin (blood sausage), maybe because they were making boudins in this particular farm in the past. For this reason, the logo featured a symbolized pig head (very simple but well-done sketch, I need to know who designed this). On the back of the T-shirt were the following words : 1er Symposium International Sur Le Contr?le Des Maturités - 28 Aout 2010. The maturité thing has a dual sense, it is what you check in the grapes before deciding to harvest, and it is also the maturity someone is supposed to have when he reaches 40 (Arnaud).
CRB Sauvignon 1996
There was so many wines that day. My first one was this Sauvignon 1996 from Clos Roche Blanche. Beautiful and still fresh.
Soon ready
Children & wine : for the picture only
Ice bottles, Pet'Nat' and water for Panache
There was all these wines cooling in the bucket and no one thought to Panache. No problem, the cooling water will make the job.
Let's eat !
Kudos to No?lla and Laurent and the other artists behind all this great food, charcuterie, oysters, terrines, salad, blood sausage, mutton, vegetables cooked with love in meat juice in an iron-cast pot, the great cheeses and the chocolate cake...
No?lla making a last spoon-tasting check before serving the vegetables
No?lla Morantin & Joe Dressner
Sylvestre Mosse & Laurent Saillard with the muttonSylvestre, on the left, is following the wine trail of his parents Agnès and René Mosse : he is leaving soon for Beaune in Burgundy, where he'll enroll the wine school.
A side of the shoe-horse table (Joe D. at the other end)
René Mosse cutting the mutton with Christian Venier
Time for a nap
CaribouI came to know Caribou here. She is a Quebec native and she created with her friend Julie a small vigneron fair in the south of France known under the name of La Mise. In spite of its size (only about 20 vignerons take part), this wine tasting event has a large aura and that's a must-visit thing if you can go there when it takes place (in winter if I remember). Here is a page about . Caribou has just been hired as a sommelière by an upscale restaurant in Saint Barth in the Carribean and she is very excited by this prospect...
Didier & Céline (OMG, I missed this CRB Gamay 1978...)
You may encounter problems to view this video (it stops at some point)
Here is a video to give you a better idea of this beautiful day. There's even an exclusive covering here by Wineterroirs : two New Yorkers feuding in front of the camera, Zaggy, who leaves New York for France a couple times a year, barking agressively against New-York expat Panache (who settled here in the Loire two years ago). See also how René Mosse, Thierry Villemade and Christian Venier can do with a mutton. And at the end, Americans and French playing pétanque...I left the party at about 10 pm, although it went on till the morning, I guess (could have slept there, no problem, said Laurent), and I passed while on my motorcycle near there in Saint-Aignan along what I think was a Gendarmerie squad setting up near the bridge for its saturday-evening shift of road checks. This is what I'd call a close call for a breath check
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wineterroirsWine Tasting, Vineyards, in France: A Wine Photoblog
Wine Terroirs : Wine discovery, wine tasting and vineyards in France .
Starting a new thing : A Photoblog about wine , winetasting , and vineyards in France . Depending on circumstances and visits , it will show an insight on little known wine producers , wine regions , and tasting experiences . There is so much material about the wine industry and artisans in France , that I should'nt be short of subjects ...
Looking for new wines , visiting vineyards in the different regions has always been one of my favorite activities . It allows you , when visiting an area , to know it on an other angle . And when you are in a specific wine region , it's so
interesting to stop at a winery , chosen at random or in advance , to taste and discover . People making the wine are always passiona they are all different , as well as the architecture , cellars , immediate landscapes , even within the same area .
Plus , since Benedicte just completed her wine & sommelier courses , she helps me with her connoisseur touch . These pages will be more than a collection of wines . Rather mostly experiences and meeting different people in Paris and in the wine country , with side stories , always with pictures , about , say , corks , bars a vins (wine bars) , wine salons , wine festivities , architecture , technology , whatever ... I don't pretend to cover all the different aspects of the subject . Opportunity and luck will have a large part on the content for "My Wine Journal" . I will focus in priority on lesser known producers , as they are more affordable and make up a large section of the wine production with so many good surprises .
Let me put it straight : I like discovering new wines and this phoblog will be an excuse for engaging in new experiences in this field ...
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