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I'm Beau Timken, master sake sommelier. In this segment we're talking about Daiginjo
sake. Somebody once asked me, What are the good versus the evils of boutique or specialized
Diaginjo sakes? Can one brewery make something better than the other and does it have to
be a small brewery? Can it be a big brewery making good sake? Comes down to the age old
argument between macro versus micro. Sometimes big breweries get a bad knock. It's in a big
brewery that they use machine automation and they can't make a hand crafted beautiful small
artisanal bottle of Daiginjo sake. In most cases I would argue that's sort of true. But
there are small departments within big breweries that definitely do small brewing techniques,
where they will do Daiginjos on a small scale using traditional equipment and using a more
kind of prolonged, more difficult kind of rigorous brewing schedule. But, if you want
to talk about hand crafted artisanal sakes, you have to look at Jizake which are small
local breweries. And they're the ones who really craft the small batch sakes, where
they're literally throwing, maybe making about a hundred and fifty cases of one Daiginjo
sake. And these are totally in demand and these guys sell these brews end brews year
in and year out, they will sell out. And within a brewery they have a bunch of different Daiginjos
that they'll manufacture each year; some for the common man, some for competition, some
for sales only for the local region as opposed to shipping their best sakes to Tokyo. Within
every Jizake or small micro brewery, they definitely have a boutique feel because they
make a boutique product. Some breweries have a mere four employees and their sakes are
as artisanal as you could possibly get. But, like I said, some major breweries also make
small scale, small batch Daiginjo sake as well. At the end of the day it's how it drinks
to you. You're the champion of your own pallet. It doesn't matter how it's made, it's how
it tastes to you.