The Sake Matsuri SG festival took over UE Square on Saturday. We headed down to the open air pavilion to learn a thing or two about the Japanese rice wine.
The event’s location was labeled as “The Skylight Atrium” at UE Square so I (incorrectly) assumed this meant it was indoors and opted for my new Julia-Roberts-in-Pretty-Woman-esque jumpsuit. I literally had to almost abort the mission when we first arrived because I was so hot and overwhelmed all I could think about was going home to put on a dress.
It hasn’t rained in like a week and a half here and it is H-O-T. Hovering around 90 degrees every day, it’s really almost unbearable…and it is DEFINITELY unbearable in a jumpsuit but a chilled glass of cold sake in my hand and one Big Ass Fan later, I was slowly acclimating to the weather.
Sake Matsuri is organized by Temple Cellars in collaboration with The Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association. Tickets were $35-$45 and offered 6 hours of free flow tastings of over 200 sakes produced by 52 sake breweries, including some rare sakes that had never yet been available in Singapore!
Breweries set up their wares and as people filed in it was all hands on deck to hand out tastes, answer questions, and sell their bottles!
We wandered from stall to stall, tasting sweet sakes, dry sakes, sparkling sakes, hot sake, cold sake, you name it!
Many of the sake brewers flew in from Japan for this event. They were thrilled to connect with sake lovers and potential customers and teach them a little bit more about their specific products. This man explained that his brewery also owns its own rice paddies so instead of only selecting the best grains of rice, they are in charge of producing every grain of rice with the same skill and expertise that has caused their business to succeed.
There were a lot of leaflets and pamphlets around with even more tips and facts about sake from production to consumption
and many bottles had long strings of facts and details about what they best pair with and how to best enjoy each unique bottle!
We came away with two delicious bottles of sake and our fancy little sake glasses so now we can act like we know what we’re doing when we drink our sake at home!
This was a wonderful event! Be sure to keep an eye on their website for info for next year’s sake-stravaganza! We will definitely be attending!
