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Koshino Kanbai  This is a sake with a legendary name and can be difficult to find even in Japan. Many people have described it as the king of sakes and after tasting a bottle I'm not going to disagree. In fact I received a bottle of this as a New Year present (due to the rampant gift exchanging here in Japan I often recieve bottles of fine sake from various business contacts!) and it formed the basis of my New Year celebrations where you are expected to partake in couple of flasks at breakfast. I'm still gathering information on this one but I do know that it's brewed in Niigata Prefecture by Ishimoto Shuzo and the rice is polished to a high degree therefore producing a high quality tipple.
As mentioned above this sake has legendary status in Japan but as it was a present I wasn't aware of that at the time aside from my wife saying "oh you're lucky this stuffs so expensive". So I thought I'd conduct a little sampling alongside some of the other bottles in my cupboard at the time, I like to play the fool and act pretentious sometimes. So I lined up three identical cups (in fact I only have three cups left from the set of five after the last earthquake sent two of them crashing to the floor.) Digressing again I know... So I have the three cups containing three different brands of sake in front of me and it's my task to identify each one. Well the other two brands had seemed perfectly enjoyable at earlier sittings but the Koshino Kanbai was in a league of it's own. The depth of flavours and subtle aftertaste confirmed that Koshino Kanbai certainly is a special sake and deserves it's cult following |