Hana Sake: Lychee, Fuji Apple and Raspberry Explained

Hana is the bottle people find by accident. Somebody orders it at a sushi place, likes it, gets home and searches "lychee sake" - and then cannot work out whether they drank sake, wine, or something else entirely. Here is what is in the bottle.

The short answer

Hana is flavoured sake. Real sake, brewed from rice, with fruit flavour added afterwards and the alcohol pulled down to around eight percent - about the strength of a light beer, and roughly half what a glass of wine is.

That is why it does not taste like the sake you get warmed in a small ceramic cup. It is sweeter, softer, colder, and much easier to drink if you have never had sake before. Traditionalists are sniffy about it. Ignore them - it is doing a different job.

The three bottles

Hana Lychee Sake - $15.99. The one people mean. Lychee is floral and perfumed rather than sharp, so the sake underneath keeps its shape instead of being buried. Sweet, but it finishes cleaner than you expect. Serve it properly cold.

Hana Fuji Apple Sake - $15.99. Crisper and less perfumed than the lychee. Fuji apples are sweet with real acidity behind them, and that acidity is what keeps this one from being cloying. If you found the lychee too much, this is the one.

Hana Raspberry Sake - $14.99. The boldest of the three and the only one with colour in the glass. Tart red fruit up front, sweet behind it. It is the one that works as a summer drink over ice, which the other two do not really need.

How to serve it

Cold, always. Warming sake is for dry traditional styles - do it to a Hana and the sweetness turns syrupy and the fruit goes flat. Straight out of the fridge into a normal wine glass is the right way, and a wine glass beats a sake cup here because the fruit needs room to come up.

Once you open it, keep it in the fridge and finish it inside a week or two. At eight percent there is not much alcohol holding it together, so it fades faster than wine does.

What to drink it with

Sushi is the obvious answer and a good one - the sweetness handles wasabi and pickled ginger better than most wine does. But it earns its place elsewhere too. It works with anything spicy, because sweet and cold is what puts out heat. It works as a dessert pour with fruit or sorbet. And at eight percent it is a genuinely useful bottle for an afternoon kiddush or a long lunch where a full-strength wine would flatten everybody.

If you want the traditional version instead

Both of these are dry, unflavoured, and about fifteen percent alcohol - a completely different drink from the Hana range.

• Sho Chiku Bai Classic Junmai - $12.99. Junmai means pure rice, nothing added. Clean, faintly savoury, good warm or cold.
• Sensei Sake - $14.99. Smooth and mild, the easiest way into dry sake if the Hana was your starting point.

The full range is at kosher sake, and we go into how sake is actually brewed in what is sake.

Lychee sake is not lychee wine

Worth clearing up, because people search for one and buy the other. Lychee wine is fermented from the fruit itself and sits around ten to twelve percent - a heavier, sweeter, more perfumed drink. Lychee sake is rice-brewed with lychee flavour added, and it is lighter and lower in alcohol. If it is the fruit-wine version you are after, we covered that shelf in the lychee wine guide.

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