Sake FAQ: Alcohol %, Calories and Storage

Here is a fact about our own menu that we find quietly funny. The word alcohol appears exactly once across all three of our printed cards, and it is a joke. It is in the description of a cocktail called Matcha Milk, which reads in full: "Matcha latte with alcohol—what more can you ask for?"

That is it. Nowhere on our wine and sake card is there an ABV figure, a calorie count, a serving size or a price. Five sakes, a tasting note against each, and one format marking on one bottle. So this post has to be honest about two different things at once: what we can tell you about the bottles we actually pour, and what the wider category answer is, attributed to somebody qualified to give it.

Where we quote general sake facts below, they come from the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association — the industry’s own trade body in Tokyo — read on 3 September 2026. Where we describe our own bottles, that is read off our printed card. We have not mixed the two.

What is the alcohol percentage of sake?

Around 15%, as a category. The association’s explanation of why is more interesting than the number: fermentation in sake brewing "can produce a drink with over 20% alcohol content. However, 20% is slightly too strong for general consumption. Therefore, the alcohol content is usually adjusted with water to around 15%, so the final product can be more enjoyable with meals."

So the figure is not an accident of the process. It is a deliberate decision to make a drink that works across a whole dinner rather than one you sip and stop. That is worth knowing before you order, and it is the reason sake behaves so differently at the table to a spirit — a point we pushed harder in the arak comparison.

What we will not do is give you a number for our five. Our card prints no ABV for any of them, and we are not going to guess one from the style, because within junmai and ginjo the range is real and a guess dressed up as a fact is worse than no answer. If you need the exact strength of a specific bottle on the night, ask the person pouring it — the bottle itself carries it.

Japanese labelling law is strict about this, which is why the bottle can answer when the card cannot. The association notes that "By Japanese law, brewers are required to include the alcohol content, ingredients, product name, net content, bottled date, producer’s name, and legal statement to prohibit underage drinking on every sake label." The information exists; it is a restaurant list that leaves it off, as restaurant lists everywhere do. What those printed terms mean is a post of its own.

How many calories are in sake?

We could not source a figure we are willing to print, so we are not printing one.

We looked. The association’s public English guides — the basics, the FAQ, the storage page, the ten facts page — carry no calorie figure anywhere, and our own card carries no nutritional information of any kind. Plenty of websites will give you a confident number per 100ml. We cannot verify how it was derived or whether it applies to any bottle we pour, so printing it here would only launder somebody else’s guess through a restaurant that looks like it ought to know.

What we can tell you is the shape of the answer. Sake’s calories come from alcohol and from residual sugar, and the second varies a great deal. Our own five are not interchangeable on that axis: the Hideyoshi Lachamte Sparkling Sake is "Bubbly peach and honeysuckle, playful and perfect with dessert", while the Ginrei Gassan Setchu Jyukusei Junmai Ginjo is "Crisp, pure, snow aged… with gentle aroma and quiet strength". If calories are why you are asking, that difference matters more than any single average would.

One thing we can state with confidence, because the association states it: there are no preservatives and no sulfites. Their words are that some sake has neutral spirits added before pressing to adjust flavour, but "brewers are prohibited to add any preservatives and sulfites to sake by law." Their basics page lists "Is Sulfite-free" as one of twelve defining points. If you are someone who reacts badly to sulfites in wine, that is a genuinely useful thing to know.

How should sake be stored?

This is the question with the most practical value and the clearest answer, and almost all of it is counter-intuitive if you are coming from wine.

Dark and cool. The association is direct about the mechanism: "Light, especially the UV rays in sunlight, degrades amino acids and vitamins in sake", and this "accelerates the changes in the characteristics of sake". That is why so many sake bottles are dark brown glass — the tint is doing a job.

Upright, not on its side. This is the one that surprises people. In their words: "One major difference to wine is that sake bottles are not corked. Because of this, unlike with wine bottles, humidity does not affect the quality of the sake, and it is recommended to store the bottles upright." Everything a wine rack is designed to do is irrelevant here.

Some styles need the fridge before you even open them. Ginjo and daiginjo carry the fruity aromatics that make them what they are, and heat strips exactly that: they are "susceptible to high-temperatures that can cause them to lose their aroma", so keep them cold and, once open, "drink it within a week". Unpasteurised namazake is stricter again — below 5°C — because its enzymes were never deactivated at bottling.

That is directly relevant to our own list rather than an abstraction: two of our five are junmai ginjo, the Ginrei Gassan and the Homare Karahashi Black Label. They are precisely the class the association says to refrigerate and finish promptly, and that is how they are kept.

Does sake go off?

Not in the way milk does, and not in the way an open bottle of wine does either. The association’s position is that "most sake usually keeps its intended flavour and color for up to a year" with proper care, that after opening it oxidises but "its flavor does not change as quickly as wine", and — the line we like most — that "There is no official expiry date on sake", so experts "recommend sake drinkers to enjoy the changing flavors."

Our own card has a bottle that is essentially an argument for that idea. The Shirayuki Sake of Edo, Genroku Era is described as "Amber-hued, nutty and fig-toned sake reviving Edo-era richness and depth" — a style that leans into age rather than fighting it, and one that tastes nothing like the crisp, pale thing most people picture when they hear the word.

And the temperature question

Briefly, because it has its own post. Most sake can be served anywhere from 15°C to over 50°C, and warming is not a way of hiding a cheap bottle — the association is explicit that sake is heated "regardless of its price and quality" and that warmth "brings out the sweetness and umami… enhances food paired with it". The full argument, and what we would actually serve warm next to charcoal food, is in how to drink sake.

What we pour, and what we do not

Five sakes, all Japanese, walked through one at a time in our sake list post, with the matcha one given a post of its own. What we do not have is a shochu pour, a soju list or a plum wine — those categories are sorted out in sake versus shochu and the umeshu post. What to drink them with is the mezze pairing piece.

And the usual honest note, since Middle Eastern food raises it: we serve pork and alcohol, so we are not halal. The rest of the practical questions are in our FAQ.

The list itself is on the wine and sake page, the room is in the gallery, and if you would rather ask a person than read a card — genuinely the best way to do this — book a table at 29 Hamilton Road and ask. We are open Tuesday to Sunday, 5pm to 11pm. For the wider context of why a restaurant like ours keeps sake at all, start at our izakaya guide.