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No fashionable fridge-scape is complete this season without a selection of “cup” sakes – Japan’s photogenic answer to the single serve. By turns funny, cute and beautiful, these ready-to-drink vessels are fiendishly collectible – and at just 180ml to 200ml they’re perfect for chucking in the tote.
“The first cup sake was launched by Ozeki in 1964, enabling Japanese spectators to enjoy drinking sake while watching the Tokyo ’64 Summer Olympics,” says sake sommelier and sake expert Natsuki Kikuya, whose clients include Kioku at London’s Raffles Hotel. “Historically, they contained everyday sake [but in the past ten years] more breweries have been creating unique cup sakes with premium contents and beautiful designs [that] invite the drinker to appreciate the artwork on the label as part of the overall experience.”
Nomanne by Koimari Shuzo
This high-end collection of Junmai sakes is housed in fine Arita and Imari porcelain made by artisans local to the Koimari Shuzo brewery in the Saga Prefecture. £22 for 180ml, suzumesake.me
Amabuki Ichigo Saké, Junmai Ginjo
A fruity and floral sake that’s fermented, most unusually, with yeast from strawberry flowers. Part of a trio of flower yeast sakes that also includes sunflower and marigold. $9 for 180ml, sunflowersake.com
Maneki Wanko Lucky Dog Sake
An easy-drinking genshu sake in a cutesy juice box featuring the canine answer to the waving “lucky cat” – currently doing the rounds in New York’s fashionable bottle shops. $6 for 180ml, astorwines.com
Kikusui Funaguchi Nama Genshu Honjozo
A classic cup sake you’ll see in vending machines all over Japan. Unpasteurised and unfiltered, with a punchy 19 per cent abv, it delivers a big hit of honeyed, yeasty sweetness. £21.99 for three x 200ml, londonsake.com
Hakutsuru Chika Sake Cup
A playful cup sake from the almost-300-year-old Hakutsuru brewery in Kobe (which also has a good sake brewery museum, should you be in that part of the world). $5 for 200ml, truesake.com
Nihon Sakari Josen Sake
A bottle, rather than a cup, in the Showa retro style, a postwar aesthetic blending east and west that many Japanese look back on with nostalgia. £6.49 for 180ml, japancentre.com
And if you’re in Japan…
Akebono Junmai Sake
Produced at the much-loved Takasawa brewery in the Toyama Prefecture, this junmai features a painterly illustration by local manga artist Michihiro Hori. ¥440 (around £2.20) for 180ml, ariiso-akebono.jp
