Tiffany Dawn Soto | Four Seasons Baltimore - Girl Meets Food

[Mary Kong-DeVito] 07 27 2012

Get ready because Pretty Marinated gets you soaked in buzz-worthy spirits, wine and beer.

Listen up, philistines. If you do that sake bomb, know this?Tiffany Dawn Soto will be silently judging you from afar.

The 30-year-old Four Seasons Baltimore Beverage Manager with fiery tresses and a nose for sake has beaten out experienced Japanese men twice her age at tasting the stuff, becoming the first female Westerner to be kikzake-shi, which in Japanese means she f?king knows what she?s talking about.

?Cold not hot, sipped not shot, and if it?s dropped in a beer, I?m calling security,? she says only half-jokingly.

So pay close attention as Soto gives you tips on how not to sound like a ignorant douchebag when drinking sake. You?ve been schooled:

• Sake is pronounced ?sah-kay,? not Anna Paquin?s character ?soo-kee?on True Blood.
• Sake is not a rice wine, beer or a spirit! It?s a naturally-fermented alcoholic beverage from Japan.
• Don?t ever tell your date to ?sake to me.?
• Sake is made of four things?rice, water, yeast and a mold called koji-kin.
• Junmai means the sake is pure, with no distilled alcohol added.
• That hot sake you drink with bad happy hour sushi? Is crap.
• The key to great sake lies in the shinpaku, the soft center of the rice grain. At least 30% of the grain is milled away to reveal this magical core.
• Sake is brewed in a method similar to beer.
• Expect an alcohol content of 15-16%.
• Water is the most important ingredient in sake-making?just like Irish whiskey, New York bagels and Michael Phelps? career.
• Don?t save it! Sake is meant to be drank within a year or two.
• Just like beer, store sake in the refrigerator to keep it fresh.
• Sake should never be yellow, gamey or skunky.
• Impress your date by ordering daiginjo-shu, the finest quality of sake, or ginjo-shu, the second finest.
• There is no unfiltered sake, only loosely or roughly filtered. Such milky-looking nigori sake is sweet, and best enjoyed with dessert.

Soto?s classes are a steal at $25 a person and include a tasting flight of five sakes. Each class is paired with a sake tasting dinner for $75 per person on the following Tuesday. Register for both and pay only $90.

Classes take place at the Four Seasons Baltimore, which stocks a whopping 100+ sakes, on the second Saturday of each month through the end of the year.

Four Seasons Baltimore
200 International Drive
Baltimore, MD 21202
410.576.5800

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Source: http://girlmeetsfood.com/pretty-marinated-how-to-drink-sake/

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