Sakagura’s Premiere Sake Library in Today’s Village Voice

“After 17 years Sakagura has aged well in the NYC sake scene, and despite its subterranean location, it has built a worldwide reputation,” writes James A. Foley in his profile of the midtown Japanese restaurant in today’s Village Voice.

The restaurant maintains a sake list that includes 200 different varieties, and those bottles pair to–and often overshadow–a menu of izakaya bites. To get a real sense of its magnitude of the collection, Foley talks with John Gauntner, the world’s only non-Japanese certified master of sake tasting, who praises the place as a shining example in the world of rice wine:

Sakagura’s real claim to fame is its drinkable library of sake; more than 600 bottles are kept chilled in a 35-foot-long cooler. Sake sensei Gauntner (a native Ohioan) says Sakagura “was the first place to embrace sake in all its true diversity, and I know of no other place that does as great a job of educating about sake as you enjoy it, or making it as intellectually accessible.”