Latest / Best of Business / Richard Ryall: Zenkuro Sake director on the company winning gold at the Tokyo Sake Challenge for its Drip Pressed Junmai Ginjo

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Richard Ryall: Zenkuro Sake director on the company winning gold at the Tokyo Sake Challenge for its Drip Pressed Junmai Ginjo · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk SEDB. Follow
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
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  Speaker 2: Sake is very much the domain of the Japanese, but
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  Speaker 2: one Kiwi brewery has taken on Japan's best and one
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  Speaker 2: gold Queenstown based Zinkuro Sake has claimed the award at
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  Speaker 2: the Tokyo Sake Challenge. It's Drip Priest. Sake Zincudo is
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand's first and only dedicated sake brewer. Brewery and
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  Speaker 2: director Richard Rayld joins me. Now, good morning Richard.
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  Speaker 3: Good morning Francesca. Nice to talk to.
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  Speaker 2: You, love you to have you with us. Zinkuro am
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  Speaker 2: I saying that.
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  Speaker 3: Correctly, your pronunciation was very good. So far, well done.
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  Speaker 2: There we go. That was for form Japanese for you, congratulations.
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  Speaker 2: You and your co director Dave entered this competition to
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  Speaker 2: marke your tenth anniversary. This must be a pretty good
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  Speaker 2: way to celebrate.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's it's been an amazing journey for us
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  Speaker 3: to reach this point and your tenure has just flown past.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah, what a way to celebrate with this fantastic
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  Speaker 3: award from from the home of the Home of Sake.
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  Speaker 3: So This is a great sort of validation of of
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  Speaker 3: where we're what we've been doing, and where we're at.
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  Speaker 2: What sits your sake apart from others.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I think you could probably say that we actually
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  Speaker 3: we've gone back to the roots of of how sak
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  Speaker 3: used to be made many hundreds of years ago in Japan.
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  Speaker 3: At the moment, saki in Japan's are very much a
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  Speaker 3: big industry. You know, they produce over five hundred million
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  Speaker 3: bottles of saki a year and it's it's a big
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  Speaker 3: industrial process. Well, we've gone back to the sort of
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  Speaker 3: roots of how it used to be made. We have
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  Speaker 3: a very sort of small batch process. Everything is done
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  Speaker 3: by hand. We don't have any machinery in the brewery.
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  Speaker 3: And we actually it could be argued that we actually
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  Speaker 3: have a perfect climate for making psake down here in Queenstown.
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  Speaker 3: You know, Queenstown's a pretty cool climate even during the summer,
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  Speaker 3: and a cool climate is great for making saki. And
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  Speaker 3: we also have some very sort of good water here.
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  Speaker 3: The water here is very soft, soft water is great
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  Speaker 3: for making saki. So all we needed was to get
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  Speaker 3: some rice and that's been that's been the process. We've
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  Speaker 3: got the climate we've got the water, we just needed
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  Speaker 3: some rice.
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  Speaker 2: Where did the rice come from?
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  Speaker 3: So we actually import our rice from from Japan. The
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  Speaker 3: rice that's used for making psaki is actually slightly different
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  Speaker 3: to the rice that you generally eat. You've got table
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  Speaker 3: rice for eating, and then you've got sakki rice for
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  Speaker 3: for making sakke. So a big, a big part of
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  Speaker 3: what we do is is getting some great sakki rice
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  Speaker 3: imported from some sake rice producing areas in Japan hand crafted.
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  Speaker 2: Does that make it a labor intensive process? Oh?
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  Speaker 3: Yes, right, it's yeah. We do everything by hand, including
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  Speaker 3: writing the number of the bottle on the label, putting
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  Speaker 3: the labels on, putting the caps on. We've got a
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  Speaker 3: great team in Queenstown here, our sake brewer brewers do
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  Speaker 3: a fantastic job. They were working very cold conditions because
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  Speaker 3: even when it's hot in Queenstown, we do like to
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  Speaker 3: keep the brewery cold, so all year they're basically in
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  Speaker 3: a very cold environment and doing everything by hand. So
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  Speaker 3: it's a it's a very inefficient way of doing it.
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  Speaker 3: But we've just sort of taken a very sort of
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  Speaker 3: I guess you could call it a conservative approach to this,
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  Speaker 3: not trying to over invest in in the in the business,
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  Speaker 3: just keeping it small batch, authentic and just growing slowly,
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  Speaker 3: and this this prize will hopefully be a springboard to
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  Speaker 3: two greater things.
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  Speaker 2: Is there good demand for it here?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's we're we're sort of really lucky with the
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  Speaker 3: timing of when we started this ten years ago. It
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  Speaker 3: was just at a point a little did we know,
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  Speaker 3: but saki was actually starting to take off around the
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  Speaker 3: world outside Japan, other countries like in the States and
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  Speaker 3: in Europe, they were just starting to get on board
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  Speaker 3: with I guess it's part of the sort of explosion
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  Speaker 3: of Japanese food everywhere around the world. Everyone's loving their
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  Speaker 3: sushi and their sashimi and their tempura these days, and
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  Speaker 3: I guess drinking sake with with Japanese his food sort
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  Speaker 3: of became sort of more of an acceptable thing to do.
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  Speaker 3: And then people have you know, some of these chefs
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  Speaker 3: now on these TV programs that we see on all
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  Speaker 3: the time, they're starting to realize that saki actually goes
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  Speaker 3: really well with not only Japanese food, but also with
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  Speaker 3: with Western food. So now you know, saka is being
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  Speaker 3: paired and matched with with all sorts of foods that
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  Speaker 3: probably the Japanese would have never thought that their their
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  Speaker 3: national drink would would go well.
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  Speaker 2: With Richard, if someone has been a bit slow at
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  Speaker 2: getting mum and Mother's Day present, is it easy to
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  Speaker 2: pick up some zincor today?
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  Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah, yeah, definitely on your way home, maybe
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  Speaker 3: this afternoon. But no, we we we we we do
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  Speaker 3: online sales of course, and and and there was various
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  Speaker 3: sales outlets all over the country. Yeah, so it's an
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  Speaker 3: exciting time for sure, So please give it a try.
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  Speaker 3: But people that sort of tend to think askia as
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  Speaker 3: being a you know, like a vodka or a tequila,
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  Speaker 3: it's not. It's it's a wine and it's a really
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  Speaker 3: delicate flavors and it really does go well with lots
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  Speaker 3: of different things.
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  Speaker 2: Richard Raoul, thank you so much for your time today.
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  Speaker 2: So that award winning sake is called zin Kuro.
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