Kijoushu: Sweet ‘dessert’ sake

If you go for a multi-course meal at a fine restaurant, the dessert might be accompanied by a sweet wine like a golden-hued Sauternes, a luxurious Tokaji, Niagara ice wine or a rare German Trockenbeerenauslese, made from grapes which sweetness and intensity has been enhanced by noble rot and extra-long ripening. Likewise, many people enjoy wines with residual sugar for sipping at home – in Italy, such sweet wines are also called vini da meditazione. But is there a sake with the same qualities as these sweet specialty wines? Yes, there is!

Sweet wines like French Sauternes not only look like gold, they commend equally high prices, too.

騎乗酒
Kijoshu, also spelled Kijoushu or Kijōshu can be roughly translated as ‘noble fermentation sake’. – A nod to sweet wine’s ‘noble rot’

During the economic boom in postwar Japan, people wanted a Japanese-made beverage that could be served at official banquets and other VIP functions as an alternative to French dessert wines and represent a newly confident and prosperous country. Kijoshu was born! Or actually, it was re-discovered: the recipe that had been invented by the National Research Institute of Brewing in 1973 was based on descriptions from very old documents that mentioned a special kind of sake made exclusively for the emperor.

What is kijoshu and how is it made?

But what is kijoshu exactly? Kijoshu is not one of the legal categories of premium sake (like junmai, honjozo, or daiginjo) and there are no rules for rice polishing ratio or alcohol addition. In theory, any grade of sake can be made as a kijoshu, but usually the rice that is used has been polished to 60–70%.

The trick in making kijoshu lies in the brewing process. The main mash usually sees three additions of water, koji and rice to ensure that the fermentation is progressing at a steady pace. When brewing kijoshu, the water in the last addition of ingredients is substituted with sake. Where a regular mash might use a rice-water ratio of approx. 100:130, you would only use 60 parts water plus 70 parts sake for a kijoshu.

When the sake is added to the tank, the alcohol level rises and the yeast can no longer convert all of the sugar, that is created by the Koji enzymes, to alcohol. The resulting sake is sweet and luscious. Often, kijoshu is made in a way so that it also has relatively high levels of acid to balance out the sweetness. It is usually aged for a few years for the flavors to develop and acquire a color that can range from golden to dark brown, depending on age.

A small bottle of kijoshu and various sweet wines.

How to enjoy kijoshu

With its high levels of sugar and amino acids, kijoshu has a complex flavor of fruits and nuts not dissimilar to the premium wines it was devised to imitate, but sometimes also reminiscent of a sweet sherry.

Kijoshu is excellent as an aperitif, to accompany a dessert or poured directly over ice cream, with cheese, or just on its own. Serve in a small wine glass to get the most of its complex aromas and allow the colour to shine.

Kijoushu’s sweetness also works well with cheese.

Where to buy kijoshu

Kijoushu is gaining popularity in Japan, but it’s still hard to find in Europe. If your local sake shop doesn’t have any kijoshu in stock, try one of the online shops below.

Hanatomoe Nature×Nature
from Ueno Gourmet (DE/UK)

Hanahato Kijoushu 8yrs aged
from Maison du Whisky (FR) or Umami Paris (FR)

Hanagaki Kijonenpu 3yrs aged
from Cavasake (CH)

(SakeGuide.net is fully independent. We have no business relation with these sites.)