Sake is made of rice, rice malt, and water, so doesn’t it naturally go well with Japanese cuisines with rice as its staple food? It’s fruity and smells nice, but there’s no way it goes well with the very Western pizza – this is what many of you must be thinking.
However pizza in actuality goes very well with sake.
We would like to touch on why they go so well with each other, as well as the recommended types of sake for this combination.

Why do pizza and sake go well with each other?

As sake spreads overseas, there is a way of enjoying it that had never been expected before. This is the combination with it.
We would like to list 3 main reasons why pizza and sake are compatible.
First, sake has good compatibility with cheese due to the fact that sake contains lactic acid produced by lactic acid bacteria.
Second, cheese contains a lot of glutamic sodium as an umami ingredient, which contains umami ingredients that are common to Japanese umami ingredients such as kelp and fish. Therefore, cheese with umami ingredients just as fish and kelp has a good compatibility with sake.
Third, sake is rich in amino acids compared to other types of alcohol, and is said to contain 20 times the amount of amino acids compared to wine. Amino acids are in essence umami ingredients. Current science shows that different types of amino acids have a synergistic effect when consumed at the same time, and have the effect of enhancing each other’s umami.
For these 3 reasons, sake and cheese have a good compatibility, and pizza with its abundance of cheese naturally has a good compatibility with sake as well.

Recommended sake that goes well with pizza

久しぶり夜家飲み
良い酒買ってきた🍶
日本酒とピザって意外と合いますよ‥ pic.twitter.com/4D7NpwTQ1T

— こうちゃん (@kou7_19) June 29, 2020

This will vary depending on what kind of pizza you are eating, so we would like to introduce the sakes in some detail.
For pizzas with relatively thick dough and a rich taste, it is especially compatible with dry ginjo sake and cold sake. We feel that the refreshing and crisp taste of ginjo sake match the richness of the pizza, so that you can enjoy sake and pizza more deliciously.
For pizzas with relatively thin dough and a light taste, we recommend junmai sake and junmai ginjo. The umami, richness and plumpness of junmai sake and junmai ginjo match perfectly match light pizzas.

Conclusion

We have introduced recommendations for sakes that go well with pizza, and just as there are many varieties of pizza, you can say the same for sake.
It may be fun to try out various kinds of combinations yourself and discover your favorite combination.
Why not try it out?