(Continuing Part 1)
Until recently, I finally got a chance to open a new bottle of Komyo myself.
As soon as I open the cork, “it smells so nice!” my friend beside me kept saying. It felt like the peach blossoms from the upstream mountains sails down the river and made a splash on the dining table – no one can resist the temptation to grab a cup.
Just like a traveler dying of dehydration on the dessert was suddenly blessed with a sip of clear stream water.
There isn’t a taste of alcohol, too pure even for the nit-picky ones. The aroma concentrates on the nasal cavity and the palate. Floating around freely just as the Chinese-mythological gods on the clouds. The shower from the sky hits the tongue and turns into a refreshing rain from a long drought. It tastes so clean. I still do not feel like I have found the right word to describe it after much pondering. All the rules and norms in the mundane worlds pale into nothing. Acidity, freshness, and even sparkliness are all quantifying criteria that meant nothing. With all that behind, words still seem to fail me in describing it. Take a sip, and someone has delivered the moonlight from Nara’s temples in summer into the sake I got.
My alcohol-allergic dad was the most light-weighted drinker of all, but he still took a glass and drank cheerfully while showering this sake with non-stop compliments. In the end, he stumbled back to sleep in the middle of dinner with a red face. This whole scene reminded me of a poem from Libai:
Two men drinking together. Mountain flowers blossom.
One cup, one cup, again another cup.
I’m drunk, on the edge of sleep – you’d better go.
At dawn, if you desire, come back with your guitar.
Time flies when you are having fun. We have not finished the sake in the afternoon. I put it in the fridge so that my friends and I can share it again in the evening. It was just a few hours when I reopened the cork; her fragile state has changed beyond recognition. A sharp and acidic taste punches right through, while the pureness in the afternoon had disappeared without a trace.
It is like spirited away happened on the tongue. Nectar like this are fairies trapped in a jar. It enchants us mortals so effortlessly, yet they disappear in a blink of an eye, leaving people longing for more.
“An inch of time is an inch of gold. But you cannot buy that inch of time with an inch of gold.”
(Disclaimer: The author has given consent to Sakeholic for re-posting and translating, the original passage can be found on the author’s Weibo. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the website and its company.)
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