Courtney Kaplan is an exceptional guide to seasonal sakes at Tsubaki and Ototo
owned by Courtney Kaplan and Charles Namba, opened in Echo Park in May 2019. I’d moved to the neighborhood the month before it launched and had embraced the place as my local watering hole. And, like so many other places, I grieved the loss of good conversations over its 11-seat bar less than a year later when the world stopped.
With all my ardor for Ototo and Tsubaki, it was only early this week that I realized I’d ignored an entire grouping of sakes on their lists for three years: “seasonal and nama.” The annual cycle for sake brewers traditionally begins in the fall, she told me, when varieties of the rice grown specifically for sake are harvested. Most sakes are pasteurized twice as part of the brewing process. “Nama” are sakes that have gone through one or no pasteurization, and have to be shipped and stored refrigerated so they don’t spoil. Not all seasonal sakes are nama, but most are.
Springtime sake releases tend to embody the return-to-life spirit of the moment: They’re bright, light, energetic. Kaplan uses the word “spritzy” to describe a nama on the menu from the Heiwa Shuzo brewery in the temperate Wakayama prefecture; it’s the right thing to kick off an evening when the temperatures still veer chilly as the sun sets.Kaplan says this easy-going-down style of sake has a second level of appeal.
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