If only sake were cheaper! While certainly this can be said of many things, somehow premium yet inexpensive sake seems much less common than most of us would like. There are a multitude or reasons why this is so, but perhaps the most relevant and obvious is the cost of the rice. Couple this with the fact that no sake brewers own rice fields that are used to grow the rice used in brewing, and you have a situation in which brewers must outlay large chunks of cash each fall to buy that expensive rice just to brew the coming  year's brew, outlays they will not see begin to flow back for at least a year.

The cost of rice, in fact, is a major portion of the cost of the final product. How much so? Well, like all things sake, it depend on a gazillion things, including who you ask.

According to Masumi Nakano, the president-owner of Dewazakura, about 70% of the cost of a sake is the cost of the rice. ”That’d be for your typical junmai ginjo sake,” he clarifies. Other brewers have given me numbers closer to 40% as well. And, without a doubt, those brewing lower grade sake will have numbers much lower than that.

So just how much of the price of a sake is the price of the rice depends on many factors. Let's look at a few of the more tangible ones.

First and foremost is the quality of the rice involved. Not all sake rice is created equal! Usually sake rice is about three times more expensive than table rice, but top quality sake rice can fetch more than lower grades from lesser growing regions. Even within sake rice, different varieties will command different prices too. As will timing: buying it in a seller's market will cost a brewer more than buying it late in the season when demand is low. The differences imparted by all of these factors can be huge.  

So first is the cost of the rice. Next is the milling. If two brewers start with the same rice, and one mills it down to 60% but another down to 35% of its original size, the latter will need to use about 25% more rice to make the same amount of sake. While the ground-away powder (called nuka) does not go to waste, the brewers make almost nothing on it when they sell it.

After quality of rice and milling come production issues. For example, does the brewer ferment the rice to get the absolute maximum amount of alcohol out of it possible, and then squeeze the lees hard and tight so as to wring every last drop out of the mash? Or does he or she rein it back a bit, stopping before the bitter end during both fermentation and pressing, so as to preserve a bit more refinement and delicateness? The latter will cost you more rice per bottle. that's for sure.

As a specific example, a brewer that gets 20% alcohol out of his fermentation and then waters it down to the normal 16% will need less rice per bottle than one who tapers fermentation off at 18% or less and waters down less - if at all. Also, non-junmai sake, sake cut with distilled alcohol, will see even higher yields, i.e. less rice cost per bottle, since after adding alcohol to pull out aroma and flavor they water that down as well.

The plot thickens further yet. Consider the scale of a brewery and its equipment. A large brewery can spread out its fixed costs over more tanks, and fixed costs can be spread out even further when sake is brewed in larger tanks. The difference between, say, 750 kg of rice per tank and 5 tons of the same can be staggering, as can those between a kura making 200 kiloliters a year and those that make 200 times that. This point is what makes so much of the largest brewers' sake such wonderful cost-performing product.

But look, for example, at Sato no Homare sake from Ibaraki Prefecture. They make only junmai ginjo and junmai daiginjo there, and on top of that they ferment in small tanks for like 40 days or longer - much longer than average. That ties the tanks up longer and limits yields. All this is reflected in his pricing that, while not cheap, is surely worth it.

Another brewer, when asked about how he determines his pricing, lamented thusly. “It’s a game. In order to make any money on a product, I know what I need to charge. Let us say for example that is 3000 yen for 1.8 liters. But if everyone around me is charging but 2800 yen, there is no way I can sell it for the price I would prefer; sales will decline. So I am to some degree limited by what everyone else is doing for a given type of product.”

Then, if we want to really push the envelope, consider margins. Sure, if we are talking prices sold out of the kura, before any markups, then the ratios of rice to price are stable. But different countries take different margins. Domestic distributor and retail margins in Japan are much less than those in the US, as one example, so that rice-cost-to-retail is higher in Japan than it might be for the same product in the US.

So as you can see, it is an appropriately complex answer. Rice grade, milling rate, brewing goals and methods, scale of operations and psychology of the market all hold some sway over just how much of the cost of a given sake comes directly from the cost of the rice. Just suffice it to say it is significant.

And this is why it is seemingly challenging at times to find cheap yet truly premium sake. But let us take solace in the fact that rarely is sake prohibitively expensive either. Like sake flavors and aromas, there seems to be a plethora of stuff available in a comparatively narrow price range. Bear all this in mind, and be willing to throw down just a pinch more on your next glass or bottle of sake. You’ll enjoy it and appreciate it more when you know what is behind what you pay for it.