For Goodness' Sake
Wetlands Sake brings a Japanese staple to Louisiana
Louisiana's first sake brewery got its start in 2019, when Nan Wallis left a bag of rice on Lindsey Beard's front porch.
Just a few weeks before, the pair of long-time friends had been discussing the way the Japanese, rice-based drink has been catching on across the country—but not in Louisiana. Beard said that somebody should open a sake brewery in New Orleans, especially considering that Louisiana ranks third in the nation for rice production. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, they should,’” Wallis agreed.
When the two parted ways, Wallis kept thinking about the conversation and started to research sake production. Two weeks later, she dropped the bag of rice on Beard’s porch with a note that said: “Call me”. Wallis had come to the conclusion that, yes, somebody should be making sake in New Orleans, and—as she told Beard over the phone—“It should be us.”
Deciding they wanted to brew their sake with Louisiana-grown rice or not at all, Wallis and Beard turned to the experts at the LSU AgCenter's H. Rouse Caffey Rice Research Station near Crowley for assistance ascertaining the perfect grains. From their research, they knew that sake brewing requires short grain rice, because when the rice is milled, it removes more of the protein layer from the exterior of the rice, leaving only the starch at the center of the grain; only short grain rice contains the necessary amount of starch. Wallis and Beard were initially discouraged to learn that though Louisiana is the third-largest rice producing state in the U.S., the vast majority of rice grown here is long grain—medium grain is occasionally grown to feed livestock and things along those lines, but Louisiana-grown short grain rice was essentially unheard of.
Two weeks later, she dropped the bag of rice on Beard’s porch with a note that said: “Call me”. Wallis had come to the conclusion that, yes, somebody should be making sake in New Orleans, and—as she told Beard over the phone—“It should be us.”
After initial testing with medium grain rice went poorly, the pair nearly gave up on their Louisiana rice-made sake dream. Then, they got an unexpected call from Dustin Harrell, resident coordinator of the Rice Research Station and former LSU AgCenter rice specialist. “I have the perfect rice for you!” he told Wallis, who was in disbelief—they had visited the Rice Station countless times over the course of two and a half years, and each time had been told there was no rice available with the qualities they required. Harrell told them about “Pirogue” rice, a short-grain Louisiana-grown rice created by a now-retired LSU AgCenter rice breeder named Steve Linscombe in 2003. The rice was originally bred to be grown in Abbeville for a Puerto Rican market.
There were still a couple of substantial catches, though: the first was that the long-forgotten short grain rice only existed in seed form at that point, meaning Wallis and Beard would have to wait for it to be planted in March and harvested that August. The second hangup was that though the pair only needed two pounds to see if the rice would even be conducive to brewing sake, the smallest amount the AgCenter could grow them was seven thousand pounds. “[Harrell] was like, 'Even if we just grow one little patch, that's gonna be seven thousand pounds,’” Wallis said. “And I was like, ‘I gotta call you back.’”
[Read our 2019 guide to New Orleans Aperitifs, Aperitivos, and Spritzes here.]
Wallis and Beard knew that it was a stop or go decision: “Do you take the risk for the reward?” Beard said they wondered. They took the risk, and a whole sake brewery later, they and the sake lovers of Louisiana are now enjoying the reward. “If that rice had not tested well, we wouldn’t have done the brewery,” said Wallis.
During that spring and summer period of 2019 while they waited for their rice to grow, the two continued to research, create their business plan, talk with brewers, and set the other practical necessities of a brewery in place so they would be ready when the crop came in. When they were able to have the rice lab-tested to ensure it had the proper high-starch, low-protein, low-iron characteristics, the results showed that the grains were ideal for sake brewing. “We were high-fiving, because it worked out really well,” Wallis said. The AgCenter grew them 100,000 pounds of the Pirogue rice in 2020, which they’re currently using to brew, while another crop is growing for an August 2021 harvest. “We have about 240,000 pounds in the ground right now,” Wallis said. That translates to a lot of sake.
Finding a space for their brewery was another challenge that took them over a year to accomplish, which included those months that the first crop of rice was in the ground. “We would drive around all day, we would open garage doors, and warehouse doors, and talk to people,” Wallis said. No one knew of any large enough space available. “Literally, we would drive around, and she’d be like ‘Look! That one looks empty!’” Beard recalled. “And I’d open it and be like, ‘Mardi Gras float, again! Everything’s filled with Mardi Gras floats!’” Opening a business in New Orleans poses unique obstacles, to be sure.
Wallis and Beard knew that it was a stop or go decision: “Do you take the risk for the reward?” Beard said they wondered. They took the risk, and a whole sake brewery later, they and the sake lovers of Louisiana are now enjoying the reward.
The space they landed on, adjacent to the Dickie Brennan Group’s Commissary off of Tchoupitoulas, is seven thousand square feet that they had to build out entirely. Still a work in progress, the space will eventually include a taproom in the front area—hopefully to be completed by the end of summer.
For now, there are four brewers cranking out Wetlands’ simple-yet-nuanced sakes with a combined forty years of experience in beer brewing and distilling. Over the course of the three years that Wallis and Beard worked toward actualizing their plan, they brought in three different brewers with Japanese experience to train their team. It was easy enough to find folks familiar with brewing beer in Louisiana; sake, not so much. “[The brewers] came with their own experience and deep backgrounds, but now they’ve been trained to convert their knowledge into knowing what to do with sake,” Wallis said.
Now, Wetlands even makes their own koji, a key ingredient in sake; one of only four ingredients that goes into Wetlands’ product (rice, water, yeast, and koji—the sparkling varieties also include the addition of natural fruit flavoring). Wallis described koji as somewhat comparable to a sourdough starter. Koji begins as steamed, milled rice, then enters the hot and humid koji room (yes, hotter and more humid than even a New Orleans summer), where koji spores—a food-grade mold commonly used in products like miso and soy sauce in Japan—are added. For the first twenty-four hours of heat and humidity, the koji spores grow, then for the next twenty-four hours the humidity is removed to allow the koji spores to dry into the rice. Then the koji, more steamed rice, water, and yeast go into the fermentation tanks, where the koji converts the rice starch into sugar, which is consumed by the yeast to yield alcohol. The sake is then passed through a membrane filter press to remove the rice sediments, and then pasteurized to halt the fermentation process and stabilize the sake, ensuring a longer shelf life.
“It's gluten-free, it's hand-crafted, it's vegan, there is no artificial anything added—no preservatives, no additives,” Wallis said. “So, it's very clean and pure.” So clean, in fact, that some have said sake doesn’t cause hangovers. “I’m not really gonna tout that—if you drink enough of anything you’re gonna get a hangover,” Wallis said. “But it’s a clean drink.’
After three long years of work that included the rice dilemma, the warehouse hunt, and a whole slew of other COVID-related setbacks, Wetlands Sake became available in local grocery stores in March 2021. Now, the sakes are available across the state in major grocery stores such as Winn Dixie and Rouses, as well as smaller local chains like Breaux Mart and Calandro’s; plus smaller local wine, beer, and spirits retailers like Bin Q, Martin’s Wine Cellar, 504 Craft Beer Reserve, and Alexander’s Highland Market. Now that people are again drinking in places besides their own homes, Wetlands Sake is available in local restaurants and bars, too. “It’s blossoming, and we’ll hopefully move seamlessly into the taproom and the whole experiential element being a part of it too,” said Katrina Matthews, director of marketing for Wetlands Sake.
“It’s blossoming, and we’ll hopefully move seamlessly into the taproom and the whole experiential element being a part of it too,” said Katrina Matthews, director of marketing for Wetlands Sake.
Currently all four varieties of Wetlands Sake are available in cans: unfiltered (a cloudy, lightly floral beverage more akin to traditional sake), filtered, or sparkling (which is lighter, fizzier, and includes natural passionfruit or blood orange flavors). Once the taproom opens, the team looks forward to debuting different infusions that will rotate, flights, sake cocktails, and other creative interpretations. “This will be a fun experience for people to come and try sake, and then we can share our love of sake with them,” Wallis said. “We think the educational piece is important, because people trying our sake will open their eyes to trying other sakes that are being imported,” Beard said. “Hopefully that means that sake will grow in general in Louisiana.”
[Find a cocktail recipe for a Marigny Mule here.]
They also hope to open people’s minds to the wide variety of cuisine that sake pairs well with, beyond just sushi and hibachi. And while they think it certainly elevates any food experience, Beard and Wallis also want to assert their sake’s place as an excellent option for a stand-alone, grab-and-go alternative to beer or hard seltzer. “We put it in a can because we want people to take it with them everywhere,” Beard told me. “We don’t think it needs to be paired with food—it pairs well with life.” Both having grown up in New Orleans, the two women understand the importance of being able to throw a canned drink in a cooler to bring on the parade route, or on the fishing boat, or wherever. “We were committed from the beginning to doing cans,” Wallis said. “Because we were thinking: one, it's the most recyclable packaging out there; and two, we wanted the whole single serving grab-and-go thing.”
“We think the educational piece is important, because people trying our sake will open their eyes to trying other sakes that are being imported,” Beard said. “Hopefully that means that sake will grow in general in Louisiana.”
Another commitment Wallis and Beard made when they first conceived of Wetlands Sake is right in the name: they’ve pledged to donate two percent of all profits to Save America’s Wetlands. “We were pretty intent on the fact that the wetlands were such an important part of it for us,” Wallis explained. “Because we’ve both lived here our whole lives, and we’ve experienced hurricanes, and we’ve experienced flooding, and we’ve experienced farmers losing crops because they get flooded out, and we need the conservation of wildlife, and the wetlands, and the coastal safety of that. We grew up being familiar with that; we also grew up having access to the beauty of the wetlands and the benefit of the wetlands . . . if we can do it where we can help restore that, and use Louisiana resources—that was really the intention.”
Save America’s Wetlands is a national organization; as Wetlands Sake eventually launches into other states, Beard and Wallis will identify wetlands conservation efforts in those areas to contribute to. “So, in each state we go into, we’ll try to take the opportunity to find someone who’s doing good work in that market,” Wallis said. That’s why she and Beard chose the heron for their logo—there are wetlands all over the world, and in all of them, there are herons. “It’s a bird that everyone recognizes,” Beard said. “There are different species of it, obviously—a lot of them—but it’s a bird that no matter where you go, people can relate to it.”
“Because we’ve both lived here our whole lives, and we’ve experienced hurricanes, and we’ve experienced flooding, and we’ve experienced farmers losing crops because they get flooded out, and we need the conservation of wildlife, and the wetlands, and the coastal safety of that. We grew up being familiar with that; we also grew up having access to the beauty of the wetlands and the benefit of the wetlands . . . if we can do it where we can help restore that, and use Louisiana resources—that was really the intention.” —Nan Wallis
There’s another, smaller, more hyper-local way Wetlands Sake is giving back: the leftover compressed rice filtered off after the fermentation process (called kasu) goes to “The Reverend”, a farmer in Jefferson Parish who feeds it to his cows. After talking with Wallis and Beard and touring the shiny new brewery, which is already saturated in a sweet, subtly-sour sake scent, I stepped out into a sunny, hot New Orleans day to find The Reverend, clad in shrimp boots, loading his truck bed with buckets of the kasu.
“Are you the farmer who’s feeding his cows the leftover sake rice?” I asked.
“Oh yes ma’am! They’re lovin’ it too. They love it, and I love them! It keeps them happy, and let me tell you: they are so tender!”
The fact that the mashed rice byproduct of Wetlands Sake is so enjoyed by cows across the Huey P. Long Bridge—and consequentially by those who enjoy said cows—perhaps serves as an indicator of how enjoyable the sake itself is to humans. As someone who’s tried it—now with barbecue poolside, Lebanese food in the living room, and all on its own—I must agree that this cooler-friendly, subtly sweet and floral, refreshing-yet-deceptively-boozy Japanese drink is in Louisiana to stay.