Sake Made in the USA

Video Transcript

"I'm Beua Timken, master sake sommelier, and in this segment we're speaking a little bit about the history of sake. When you think of sake, you think of Japan. And when you think of wine, you think of France, and when you think of beer you think Germany. The first point or destination that sake left Japan were the Hawaiian Islands. At the turn of the century, there were many farm workers who left Japan and went to Hawaii to work on farms. And these farms workers missed their sake--so much so that they started importing as much as they possibly could. Well so much sake and so many of the laborers started going to Hawaii, that the government put a tax on sake and said, you know, we have to minimize how much we're exporting there, and how many people are going over there. So literally at the turn of the century, we noticed the first breweries opened up outside of Japan. Where? Lo and behold in the United States of America. The Hawaiian Islands. And, literally at the turn of the century they had about twenty different breweries operating on the Hawaiian Islands. And that was the genesis for the exporting of sake, if you will. Now, fast forward to the seventies and the eighties, and this is where the first touchdown, if you will, of major breweries in Japan started putting satellite breweries across the world. And now we have breweries in South America, and Australia, but more importantly we had a bunch of different breweries here in the United States, and we still do. In the '70s and the '80s, we started noticing breweries popping up in California, and then we had Colorado, and then in Oregon. And so it is these major breweries would come, and they thought, you know what, we can make a better, cheaper product in the United States using local ingredients, and really creating a very viable, very affordable brew. And so sake started being produced here in the United States, '70s and '80s, and today we still have about nine different breweries, Japanese owned or partnership breweries, that are making predominantly I would say most of the restaurant sakes that you're drinking--that it be a hot sake or the Nigerian filter sake, I would say nine out ten times these are made locally in the United States. Cheaper, not as great a product, but still serviceable, and very affordable."