Traditional Sake Production

Interesting video on how traditional sake is made which also explains a little about the mold that breaks the rice down to create simple sugars for the yeast.

The Making of Shimizu-No-Mai Japanese Sake

My Experiences With Wine

When I was a kid, my parents would sometimes let me have a sip of their wine at dinner.  I can't tell you what kind it was, or even whether it was red or white (probably red since that's what they usually drink) but I definitely remember thinking that it was the worst grape juice I'd ever had.  Since then, I like to think my palate has become a little more refined and I often enjoy a glass of wine with dinner or simply on its own.

I have had wine on occasion over the last few years, but it was really this past summer when I started drinking wine on a more regular basis.  The wines that I most often buy are merlot and cabernet sauvignon for red, and pinot grigio and chardonnay for white.  There's really no particular reason for me preferring these wines.  My friends and family typically drink those wines and I just went along with it.  So for approximately the last year I've been drinking wine once or twice a week, as opposed to once or twice a month before that.

In this class, I'm really hoping to learn about what makes the various wines different since at this point I probably wouldn't be able to do much more than tell you whether a wine was red, white, or sparkling if I was blindfolded.  I have really begun to enjoy drinking wine, and I'm looking forward to understand more about the process of making wine, tasting it, and mostly not sounding like an idiot when I try talking about it.