People working in alcohol-related industries—such as food service, hospitality, or sake breweries—likely have regular opportunities to drink sake as part of their jobs, as well as experience evaluating what they taste. However, for someone like me who works at a regular corporate company, drinking sake usually happens at restaurants and bars on the way home from work or on days off. Under normal circumstances, we simply don’t have the experience of objectively evaluating the sake we drink.
Because of this, I felt that industry professionals held an overwhelming advantage when it came to the secondary tasting exam. I knew that if I wanted to pass while working a regular corporate job, I would need a solid strategy.
The first thing I focused on was establishing a baseline.
I bought several bottles of sake from a local liquor store, drank them, and used a tasting sheet to evaluate their appearance, aroma, and flavor. Anyone can do this much. The real challenge—and the most crucial part—is figuring out whether your evaluation is actually correct.
In reality, there is no single correct answer when it comes to tasting. Since it relies on human senses, it is completely natural for a hundred different people to have a hundred different evaluations. Even if a sommelier notes the aroma of honeysuckle, you are not wrong just because you do not perceive it that way yourself.
However, an exam must always have right answers; otherwise, grading would be impossible. This led me to my very first dilemma: what exactly is the evaluation standard for this secondary tasting exam?
Those who can attend a wine school can practice tasting based on the criteria provided by their instructors. However, if you are self-taught, you have to establish those standards on your own. I fell into the latter category, meaning I had to build my own baseline from scratch.
A Thorough Analysis of the Book by the Japan Sommelier Association’s President
This is the book I used to establish my baseline.
This book contains Mr. Tasaki’s personal tasting notes for more than 100 different bottles of sake. I figured that if I could successfully link the expressions and terminology used in his commentary to each specific sake classification (Tokutei Meisho), I could build a baseline capable of handling the actual exam.
First, I transcribed every single commentary from the book into text format. If you have high-precision OCR software, it probably isn’t that much trouble, but I chose the brutally honest route and typed out every single word on my computer.
After that, I analyzed the transcribed commentary using a text mining tool. This allowed me to uncover various insights, such as the frequency of specific terms and the strength of the connections between different expressions.
Ultimately, I focused on each sake classification as a core axis, picking out related terms and compiling them into a comprehensive list. By filtering this down to only the terminology actually used in the official exam, I successfully created my very own customized evaluation baseline.
Once You Can Identify the Classification, the Rest Is Just Memorization
Through this process, I managed to memorize all the terminology associated with each classification. Even today, if I am presented with a Daiginjo-shu, for example, the appropriate descriptive terms immediately come to mind.
However, that wasn’t the main challenge. The real key is accurately identifying the classification. If you can’t figure out the classification or type of the sake in your mouth, you can’t apply the terms you’ve memorized. Furthermore, if your initial identification is wrong, you are highly likely to end up choosing completely irrelevant terminology.
To address this, I focused my training entirely on learning how to correctly guess the classification. Every night before bed, I would randomly pick two bottles from a selection of five different sakes and do a comparative tasting, working hard to capture the unique characteristics of each classification.
Through this comparative tasting, I reached a point where I could distinguish between pure-rice sakes (Junmai-kei) and alcohol-added sakes (Aruten-kei) with nearly 100% accuracy. I truly believe that dedicating a significant amount of time to this specific practice—tasting to identify the classification—was the single biggest factor in my passing the exam.
Studying for the Sole Purpose of Passing the Exam
Compared to the structured environment of a wine school, this style of studying might be considered unconventional or even cheap. However, I believe that no matter how unorthodox your method is, it doesn’t matter as long as you pass the exam. Conversely, no matter how advanced or sophisticated your studies are at a wine school, it means absolutely nothing if you end up failing.
At the end of the day, passing is all that matters. The most important thing is to map out the shortest route to success and design a study method that works best for you.