When making liquor (like sake) from a starchy substance (like rice), the starch must be changed to sugar with the enzyme action of a substance (like saliva).

…Wait, what?

It’s true. The first sake in Japan was made at big rice-chewing parties. Everyone in the village would show up, chew some raw rice, spit it into a container, then go back home, content in the knowledge that they would soon gather for another village party, this time fueled by spit-soaked sake, known as kuchikami no sake, “chewing-in-the-mouth sake.” After the chewing party, water would be added to the saliva-rice and then the mixture would be monitored until it smelled alcoholic—what poor sap had that job? and was he likely to drink the most or least at the party?—at which point, everyone would gather again to drink their very communal concoction.

This type of liquor is not exclusive to Japan; in South and Central America as well as other parts of Asia, people were chewing their way toward drunkenness during the seventh through tenth centuries. In Taiwan, the custom was practiced until the early twentieth century. In Hokkaido and Okinawa, the northernmost and southernmost parts of Japan, they prepared the drink for special festivals and only women chewed the rice.

Luckily, koji was discovered, a useful little mold which not only turned starch into sugar for sake, but also came to be used to make miso, natto and soy sauce. Where would Japan be without you, Aspergillus oryzae?

…Drinking a whole lot of backwash, that’s where.

It used to be all sake was taruzake, sake stored in casks made of Japanese cedar, sugi, which imparts an woody, spicy taste to the drink. Now that sake is usually brewed in enamel-lined stainless steel tanks and stored in glass bottles, the wooden taru casks are only used by a few brewers and taruzake has become a specialty drink usually consumed around New Year’s, often sipped from little boxes also made of cedar. It makes sense as a cold-weather drink; the earthy, cinnamon-like scent and flavor are as comforting as spiced wine. Plus, after spending a winter in Japan, the smell of damp sugi will inevitably remind you of steamy Japanese baths, one of the only places you can actually find warmth during that cold and terrible season.

But the first time I drank taruzake, it was spring. And it wasn’t sake brewed in a wooden cask, but sake stored in a big jar with a piece of fresh sugi floating in it. It was close enough. The sake was a golden yellow and smelled more strongly of wood than I expected. (Indeed, high-end sakes are not used for making today’s taruzake because the wood taste overpowers anything else.) But after my first sip, I was hooked. The woody taste and smell were different from anything I had ever tried before.

I have to admit I was already a big fan of the smell of Japanese wood, which may be why I liked it so much. I have been known to ride my bicycle in the evenings past the factory near my apartment that always seems to emanate either the scent of fresh-cut wood or fragrant wood smoke, just sniffing. Pine is fine, but there’s nothing like the smell of cut sugi or hinoki (Japanese cypress), the latter being an especially popular scent for incense, bath salts and the like in Japan.

I’ve never seen bottled taruzake in the stores, so when I spotted a sugi sake set at a local recycle shop, I quickly snapped it up. Not only is it nice to look at and handle—both the tokkori and the cups are light and smooth—it imparts the perfect amount of cedar scent and flavor, so I can have a sort of homemade taruzake whenever I like.