Junmai, Ginjo, Daiginjo, Honjozo: What the Sake Grades Actually Mean

People point at the sake list and ask which grade is the best one. There is an answer, it is daiginjo, and that answer will mislead you more than it helps.

The grades do rank something. They rank one specific quality, and that quality is not the same as whether you are going to enjoy the glass. Before that part makes sense, the label has to come apart.

Every one of those words is two separate facts printed together. One fact is about what went into the tank. The other is about how much of each grain of rice got thrown away before it did. Read them apart and the list stops being a mystery.

Junmai Is About What Is In It

Junmai means rice, koji and water. That is the whole ingredient list.

The alternative is a sake with a small amount of distilled brewing alcohol added late. If a label does not say junmai, that is usually what it is telling you.

So junmai is not a quality mark. It is an ingredient statement, and it is the first of the two facts.

Ginjo Is About How Much Rice Was Removed

The second fact is the milling.

Seimaibuai is the percentage of the grain that is left after polishing, so a lower number means more was ground away. Sixty percent means forty percent of the grain is gone. The brewer is cutting in toward the starchy centre and cutting away the fat and protein around the outside.

Ginjo requires 60 percent or less. Daiginjo requires 50 percent or less.

Ginjo is also a method and not only a number. The ferment is run cold and slow, which is where the fruit and flower aromatics in that style come from. A brewery cannot mill to 60 and stop there.

Why Junmai Daiginjo Exists

Two facts, two axes, and they do not depend on each other.

Junmai Daiginjo is a sake with nothing added, milled to 50 percent or less. Plain Daiginjo is milled to 50 or less with a little alcohol added. Both are legitimate and they are different things, not better and worse things.

That is the whole reason the names get long. The label is stacking two independent facts.

The Part That Surprises People

Junmai has no milling requirement at all.

It is the only one of the eight designations with no number attached to it. A junmai can be milled to 70 percent or to 35 percent and it is still just junmai.

It used to have one. Until 2004 a junmai had to be milled to 70 percent or less, and that requirement was removed. Brewing had moved on far enough that the number was no longer telling anyone much.

This is the single most useful thing to know about a sake list, because it means a bottle labelled plainly can be polished as hard as one with a longer name.

Honjozo Is Not The Cheap One

Honjozo is milled to 70 percent or less with brewing alcohol added, and the amount is capped. It cannot exceed 10 percent of the weight of the white rice.

That cap matters, because it is what separates honjozo from the bulk sake the added-alcohol reputation actually comes from. A small, limited addition late in the process lifts aroma out of the mash and leaves the sake lighter and drier. It is a technique, not a shortcut.

We do not have a honjozo on the list at the moment. That is a gap on our side rather than a comment on the category.

Tokubetsu Means The Brewery Is Telling You Something

Tokubetsu means special, and it is the one designation with an either/or. A Tokubetsu Junmai is milled to 60 percent or less or made by some special method, and if it is the method, the brewery has to say what the method is.

It is worth reading when you see it. Somebody chose to put it there.

Read The Number, Not The Name

Here is what all of that looks like on our own list, in order of how hard the rice was polished.

Dassai 23 is milled to 23 percent. Junmai Daiginjo.

Hakkaisan 45 is milled to 45 percent. Junmai Daiginjo.

Koikawa Dry is milled to 55 percent. Tokubetsu Junmai.

Ayakiku Sanuki Olive is milled to 60 percent. Plain Junmai.

The numbers descend in a straight line. The names do not follow them. The bottom two are polished to the ginjo threshold or past it, and neither one says ginjo anywhere on the label.

That is not a mistake and it is not modesty. Those breweries are making a different kind of sake and the name is describing it accurately. Koikawa is going for ultra dry, +12 on the sake meter. Ayakiku is chasing what their own olive yeast does. Neither one is trying to make an aromatic ginjo, so neither one is labelled as one.

One Thing All Eight Have In Common

Every special designation, from honjozo up to junmai daiginjo, requires koji rice to be at least 15 percent of the white rice used.

Koji is the mould that turns rice starch into sugar so the yeast has something to eat. Fifteen percent is the floor for all of them, which is a good reminder that the koji is doing the same essential job at every level of the list.

The Ranking Is Real, And It Is Ranking Smoothness

Everything above is the mechanics. This is the part that actually matters when you are ordering.

The standard does contain a judgement. Daiginjo has to be particularly excellent in aroma and flavour, where ginjo only has to be excellent. On paper the highly polished daiginjo sits at the top, and technically that is correct.

What it is ranking is refinement. The Japanese idea of a great sake runs toward smooth, clean and precise, and milling harder is how a brewery gets there. Measured that way, the most polished bottle in the room is the best bottle in the room.

That measure does not automatically travel.

Dassai 23 is the clearest case on our list. Milled to 23 percent, and it drinks like lightly flavoured water. I mean that as praise. It is delicate and it is very good. But plenty of people, here especially, are drinking sake fast rather than slowly, and a glass like that put back in one go gives you almost nothing. You would walk away certain it had no flavour.

It has plenty. It is quiet, and it does not survive being rushed.

So the grade is a real ranking of a real thing. It tells you how far a brewery went toward refinement. It does not tell you whether refinement is what you want tonight.

Ordering From Here

Read the name as a score of one thing only.

Read the two facts.

Junmai or not tells you whether anything was added. The ginjo and daiginjo words tell you how hard the rice was milled and roughly what the brewery was chasing with it. Neither one tells you whether you will like it.

If you want to see the difference rather than read about it, come in and try a hard-polished one next to a plain junmai. We will pour you both and you can decide which one is actually your kind of sake. See the rest of the menu.