Junmai, ginjo, daiginjo: what sake grades actually mean

Almost every English explanation of sake grades says the same thing: daiginjo is the most polished, so it is the best. That is roughly as useful as saying a wine with more oak is the best wine.

The grades are real and they are legally defined — but they describe a style, not a ranking. Here is what each word on the label is actually promising you.

Two questions, four words

Every premium sake label answers two independent questions.

Question 1: was distilled alcohol added?

• Junmai (純米, "pure rice") — no. Rice, water, koji and yeast only.
• No junmai on the label — yes, a small amount of distilled alcohol was added.

Question 2: how much was the rice polished?

• Ginjo (吟醸) — polished to 60% or less.
• Daiginjo (大吟醸) — polished to 50% or less.
• Honjozo (本醸造) — polished to 70% or less, with added alcohol.

Combine them and you get the eight designations recognised in Japan, collectively called tokutei meishoshu (特定名称酒, "special designation sake"):

Designation	Polishing (seimaibuai)	Added alcohol
Junmai (純米)	No legal limit	No
Tokubetsu Junmai (特別純米)	60% or less, or a special method	No
Junmai Ginjo (純米吟醸)	60% or less	No
Junmai Daiginjo (純米大吟醸)	50% or less	No
Honjozo (本醸造)	70% or less	Yes, capped
Tokubetsu Honjozo (特別本醸造)	60% or less, or a special method	Yes, capped
Ginjo (吟醸)	60% or less	Yes, capped
Daiginjo (大吟醸)	50% or less	Yes, capped

Anything that meets none of these is futsushu (普通酒), "ordinary sake" — and that is still the majority of what is brewed and drunk in Japan. It is the table wine of the category, not a scandal.

The polishing number is not a quality score

Seimaibuai (精米歩合) is the percentage of the rice grain remaining after milling. Lower means more was ground away. A daiginjo at 40% has had 60% of each grain removed.

Two things follow, and only two:

1. Polishing removes protein and fat from the outer layers of the grain. Those compounds create heavier, more savoury, sometimes rougher flavours.
2. What is left is mostly starch, which ferments into something cleaner, lighter and more aromatic.

So high polishing buys you elegance and fruit-and-flower aromatics. It costs you body, savouriness, umami and rice character. Whether that is an improvement depends entirely on what you are drinking it with.

This is the single most useful correction we can offer: if you are drinking sake with a rich meal, a highly polished daiginjo is often the wrong choice. A junmai at 70% will stand up to grilled fish, braised pork or a mushroom dish. A delicate daiginjo will disappear underneath them. Serve the daiginjo cold, on its own or with something clean — sashimi, tofu, a light broth.

Polishing is also why daiginjo costs what it does. Removing 60% of your raw material and running a slower, colder fermentation is genuinely expensive. You are paying for a production method, and you should only pay for it when you want what it produces.

Added alcohol is not cheating

The most persistent myth in English sake writing is that non-junmai sake is watered down or padded out with cheap spirit.

The alcohol added to honjozo, ginjo and daiginjo is a small, legally capped quantity — no more than 10% of the weight of the rice used, in white-rice equivalent. It is added late in the process, and the reason is chemistry: many of sake's aromatic compounds are more soluble in alcohol than in water. Adding a measured amount of distilled alcohol lifts those aromas out of the mash and into the finished sake.

The practical result is that an aru-ten ("alcohol-added") ginjo is typically more aromatic, lighter and crisper than its junmai equivalent, not worse. Many of the sake that win the big Japanese competitions are alcohol-added daiginjo, because that style shows spectacularly in a tasting flight.

Bulk cheap sake padded with industrial alcohol does exist — that is one of the things futsushu can be. But the presence of added alcohol on a tokutei meishoshu label tells you about style, not corner-cutting.

One more rule most guides get wrong

Junmai used to require rice polished to 70% or less. That requirement was removed in 2004. Today junmai has no polishing limit at all; the brewer simply has to disclose the seimaibuai on the label.

What replaced it applies to every special designation: at least 15% of the total rice must be koji rice, and the rice must meet grading standards. So if you see a guide confidently stating "junmai means 70% or less," you are reading something written from a source that is more than twenty years old — a good signal to distrust the rest of it.

The other words on the bottle

Grade is only half of a label. These modifiers often tell you more about how the sake will actually taste:

• Namazake (生酒) — unpasteurised. Fresher, livelier, sometimes slightly spritzy. Must be kept refrigerated. If a shop is storing nama at room temperature, buy elsewhere.
• Genshu (原酒) — undiluted. Most sake is cut with water to around 15–16% ABV; genshu arrives at 17–20%. Bigger, denser, excellent over a single large ice cube.
• Nigori (にごり) — coarsely filtered, so rice solids remain. Cloudy, usually sweeter and rounder. Shake or don't shake — both are legitimate; try it both ways.
• Muroka (無濾過) — not charcoal-filtered. Keeps colour and flavour compounds that filtering would strip. Often seen as muroka nama genshu, which is the full-intensity version of a brewery's style.
• Kimoto / Yamahai (生酛 / 山廃) — traditional starter methods that let wild lactic acid develop. Higher acidity, earthy and gamey notes, food-friendly. Excellent with cheese, which surprises people.
• Koshu (古酒) — deliberately aged. Amber, nutty, closer to sherry or aged rum. A minority taste and priced accordingly.

Numbers you can ignore, mostly

Two figures often appear on back labels or shop listings:

Nihonshudo (日本酒度), usually written as Sake Meter Value or SMV. Positive is drier, negative is sweeter, roughly −3 to +10 covers most of what you will see. It measures density, not perceived sweetness.

Sando (酸度), acidity. Typically 1.0 to 2.0.

They interact: a +5 sake with low acidity can taste softer than a +2 with high acidity, because acid reads as dryness on the palate. Use SMV as a rough sanity check when you cannot taste before buying, and ignore it entirely once you can.

A one-minute method for choosing in a shop

1. Decide what you are eating. Rich food → junmai, kimoto or yamahai. Delicate food or nothing at all → ginjo or daiginjo.
2. Check for junmai. Present means fuller and more savoury; absent means lighter and more aromatic. Neither is better.
3. Read the seimaibuai as a style dial, not a price justification. 70% is robust; 50% is refined; 35% is a special occasion.
4. Look for nama if you want it fresh and lively — and check it has been kept cold.
5. Buy the smaller bottle first. 300ml is enough to know whether you want the 720ml.

That is genuinely the whole skill. Everything after this is preference.

Last verified 5 August 2026. Designations follow the Japanese National Tax Agency's standards for special designation sake.