Sake

Sake is a Japanese alcoholic beverage brewed from fermented rice, made using koji, a mold cultivated on steamed rice that converts the rice's starch into fermentable sugar, a technique distinct from the malting process used in beer brewing. The earliest Japanese textual reference to a rice-based intoxicating drink appears in the Kojiki, Japan's oldest surviving chronicle, compiled in 712 CE, and archaeological and documentary evidence points to Nara, Japan's capital in the eighth century, as the site of what is described as the first dedicated sake brewing facility, built around 689 CE. Koji-based brewing is understood to have replaced an earlier, undocumented method in which rice was chewed and spat into a vessel to begin fermentation with enzymes from saliva, a method that leaves no clear trace in the written or archaeological record and is not reflected in the dates given here.