Kanpai, the History of Sake is about Japan's traditional alcoholic beverage, sake, which is often called rice wine, because it's made out of rice, but it's really not made like wine. When you make wine, you have fruit, typically grapes, and those already have sugar in them. You can let nature run its course, and those will naturally ferment. But with rice, you need to use a special mold called 'koji' to break down the starches into sugars and make them available for fermentation. The Japanese have been making sake since at least the 8th century, maybe earlier, and so my book goes through the history of sake, its production, but also its consumption. How it influenced classical literature, how brew pubs developed, and these places called 'izakaya', which are spreading around the globe. These are places where you can have a drink and some food—usually very good food. The final chapter looks at sake outside of Japan, in North America and briefly in the UK.

Sake is embedded in ritual and in food culture. The drink is really central to Japanese culture. And what surprised me is that there was no history of it in English, and I really wanted to write that book. I felt a need for it. I've studied Japanese food for the last 25 years. And you constantly run into sake, but no one had written the history in English. So I saw it as a very valuable need. We have great books about what sake is, and how it's made, and wonderful breweries, and what to buy, and drink, and how to drink it, but nothing about the long history of sake—and that's what I wanted to look at. One of the things I discovered is that sake has always been changing. You know, the recipes have been changing, and how people appreciate it has changed, so that's been very interesting to study.

Sake can be served warm, cold or at room temperature. The great thing about it, is that unlike a lot of alcoholic beverages, beer or wine, you can try it at different temperatures. Warm beer for example is just terrible, but sake, warm, or hot, or cold, completely changes the flavor profile. You could have the same sake and serve it at different temperatures and decide, 'oh, it's much better warm than it is cold', or vice versa. It has a lot of flexibility in that regard. Unfortunately, sometimes in restaurants they heat it until it's like the temperature of tea. And you don't know how long it's been around, and that's just not how you serve it. There are better ways to drink sake, than what's served in some restaurants.