Richard Geoffroy reflects on IWA Sake’s two year anniversary

Despite taking on an advisory role at Franciacorta producer Bellavista, it’s business as usual for Richard Geoffroy at IWA Sake.

The former chef de cave of Dom Perignon unveiled his sake in London last September. At the time he said that he hoped to raise the drink’s profile beyond Japan: “There is no culture of export, and sakés deserve better cultural recognition”. He also explained that the pandemic had prompted western consumers to “venture and explore and discover new expressions” as an antidote to isolation and an inability to travel, which would be to the benefit of sake.

Two years after first launching IWA, db caught up with Geoffroy to see whether his perspective has changed as the business has developed, and whether the gradual reopening of the world has altered things.

Geoffroy’s obsessive devotion to blending remains firmly intact. When it comes to capturing Japan’s diverse culture and cuisine, “assemblage is the answer…[assemblage] adds another layer to the established order of rice polishing.” Here, Geoffroy deviated from the Japanese tradition of single brew to bring in his expertise in crafting Champagne.

This spirit of experimentation is set to continue, with IWA’s “unique potential for bottle maturation” to be explored next. “Nothing will ever be rigidly fixed”, Geoffroy states. What appears on the surface to be iconoclasm actually comes from a man with a profound infatuation with the country and its drinks.

IWA strives to shatter the perception among many western consumers that, in Geoffroy’s words, sake “is a cheap distilled spirit you drink at the end of a cheap Asian meal.” Though sake is certainly starting to gain attention in Europe and North America as a feature of high end Japanese restaurants, IWA aspires to make headway beyond that. “The wine community is actually our first audience,” Geoffroy explains, “…there are many correspondences between the two worlds: origin, terroir, landscape, people, fermentations and food.”

Though he made his name during his 28-years of service at one of the most revered names in wine, he is still enthusiastic about his newfound freedoms. “[Sake] offers more latitude for creativity than wine with way fewer constraints of sourcing. The potential of sake is immense, this has to be the next big thing in the wine & spirits industry.”

He acknowledges that the pandemic slowed “the roll out of distribution”, but points out that, having launched in April 2020, “the pandemic is the only thing we have known.” As limits on IWA’s physical presence in the marketplace are lifted, the global push for sake is reinvigorated. The ending of restrictions enables the personal touch to come to the forefront: “Our communication is nothing loud, it’s purely based on content and storytelling”, Geoffroy suggests. “It’s more of a hand sale than anything.”