An Inside Look at Selling Sake in the United States, Part I

Interview Part I: Sake's Roots in North Carolina, Current Clientele, and the Keyboard of Flavor

Sara Guterbock has been in the beverage industry her entire adult life, primarily working with wine. But having lived in Japan as a teenager, she is no stranger to Japanese culture, let alone sake. In addition to her wine-related certifications and years of experience in that branch of the beverage world, she is a certified Sake Advisor by SSI Tokyo and The Sake School of America, and is the Asian Portfolio Manager for Mutual Distributing Company, based in Raleigh, NC.  If you have had a glass of premium sake in North Carolina, there is a very good chance it passed through Mutual's hands. They move a lot of sake.

I was very happy to have the chance to conduct a telephone interview with Sara because she is someone who not only works closely with sake, but has gone out of the way to educate herself about sake, and she really is passionate about it. I will be sharing our conversation here on The Sake Press in two installments, as we had a lot to talk about. Here is the first part of our interview.   

Sake Press: Has Mutual Distributing Company always had a sake portfolio, or is it something recent?

Sara Guterbock:    We have always had sake, but we have not always had a very large number of jizake. From the time I started with the company...we had Takara USA- so all of the Sho Chiku Bai items- and then we also had the SakeOne portfolio...And then there was another company that we worked in partnership with, called Classic, which we ended up buying and sort of absorbing into us, and that was where we developed a relationship with Wines of Japan, New York Mutual Trading Company, and a few others. That growth also introduced us to the finer sakes that are being brought in through Winebow... At this point we have over 100 sakes in our portfolio... Nishimoto has just launched with us, which I am very excited about. They've got some fun products. We are also going to be the distributorship for Blue Kudzu [Sake Company], which we're really excited about.   

Sake Press: Part of your role as a distributor is marketing and education about sake. How do you approach a customer or an account that is interested in buying sake from you?

SG: “I really have to try to identify [clients] carefully when I go to each account. There's really sort of three levels of sake accounts at this point; you might even say four. The first level is the one that has been around all the time, which is like the mom and pop Asian restaurant where they're probably not going to go much beyond having sake in the box and a couple of other little things. And then we have on the very far extreme other side, we have accounts like Waraji, Blue Kudzu, Baku, Yama, Buddha'licious, that are really on the forefront of the sake movement... people whose goal is having 80 sakes on their menu. In between, we have a few other accounts who are opening up soon and  are working with us where they are probably going to have 20 sakes or so. And of those, it breaks down that maybe 10 of them are going to be jizake, and then the other ten are going to be, what I call the “gateway drugs,” which are the TyKu's, the Sho Chiku Bai's, and the fruit flavored-nigoris...which get people introduced. So the first step is really kind of identifying: “Which of those three accounts is it?”

“We then have the fourth type of account which is those [sic] with savvy chefs, like some of the restaurants say, in downtown Asheville- higher end places in our urban centers where you've got great chefs and sommeliers who want to have maybe one or two sakes on their menu to cover that category, and they don't often know what that should be. They might have a Wine Spectator-recognized list of 700 wines, and they're trying to add on some sake.”

SP: So sake in “Western” restaurants is already happening here, in your experience?

SG: “Oh yeah, absolutely. And a fifth type would be just some of the Asian Markets, which honestly, fall into the same group as some of the mom and pop restaurants.”

After breaking down the different types of clients that she deals with, Sara told me about how she approaches them, with balance being a key aspect:

SG: “The main thing I focus on when making a proposal to an account, somebody who is in that 20 sake position or a larger list is making sure they're balancing carefully on the pyramid, understanding how the pyramid works in terms of classification, in order to create a balanced list. If somebody has 10 sakes and they're all junmai ginjos, it makes no sense. We want all of the sakes to be distinguishable from one another for various reasons, whether it's kimoto shubo, or a Niigata style...We want to make sure they are understanding why they taste the way they do.”

“The first thing I try to do is explain it as its own category. It's not beer, it’s not wine, it's its own entirely different beverage and should be treated as such. I then list the sake ingredients and a little bit of their significance. So people understand, you don't necessarily look at rice variety in the same way that they look at grape variety. However, the way the rice is treated will have an effect on the flavor. Then what I do... is make a list of the main styles- nama, nigori, yamahai, kimoto, ginjo, daiginjo, honjozo...and basically a half a sentence of a key thing they should know about what that tastes like.”

"I think that some of [the challenge] is connected to language barrier, to be honest.

SP:"Absolutely,"

SG: "It's really difficult when you read descriptions of sake. Honestly, you have to be careful when you talk to clients and servers as well, because when they make a suggestion to a customer, they've only got three minutes...at the most to make a pitch on something."

SP: Yeah, you need an elevator pitch of sorts.

SG: Exactly! So what I did was, I said 'Namazake is gonna have a little bit of a nutty quality to it...' Just knowing that is something that they can say to a customer to help them… Or, talk about the perfume of a Daiginjo. It makes me crazy when you read a sake flavor profile, and it says, "Pure Ginjo taste."

I shared with Sara my own experience of reading sake descriptions that were just as vexingly vague, or overly whimsical and lyrical. While 'Pure Ginjo Taste' might mean something to a Japanese person, or someone familiar with the style, it means very little to most American consumers. There is a challenge then: not to say too much or throw a lot of Japanese at someone, but also give them something concrete that they can recognize. How then do you strike a balance and give meaningful help? Sara has a great way of doing this:

SG: “I use the image of a piano keyboard a lot when I talk to people about sake. When you think of a piano keyboard, right in the middle of the keys, you've got middle C, and do re mi fa so la ti do. These are the main notes that people recognize and listen to and everybody can sing, and that's kind of where wine is. Mostly lemon, and blackberry, and cherry and all very identifiable flavors."

"Then you take the high notes and the low notes and that's really more where sake plays. It tends to be very high-- volatile aromas, perfumes, tropical fruits, stuff that's gonna jump out of the glass before it makes it to your nose. Or, it has earthy, minerally, salty, mushroomy, umami qualities which are all the bass tones. Sometimes, I think discussing the high and low end makes a big difference rather than trying too much to do the same words that they would for wine.”

We will continue this interview in Part II, where Sara will share her thoughts on sake menus, putting together a sake portfolio, and of course, her favorite sake.