“How does he do it?” was the first thing I said when I had my first sip of Philip Harper‘s Time Machine.

When Te-chan and I visited Phillip at Kinoshita Shuzo in March 2008, he mentioned the new batch of sake he was brewing called Edoryu Kimoto, or Edo style kimoto. I don’t know exactly what is different about that pre-modern sake process, but one interesting pointis that it is fermented just by leaving it open to the naturally occuring yeast in the kura. Another point is that you’ve probably never had anything like it.

What’s amazing about this bottle is it is -72 nihonshudo, which tells me it is super sweet just by looking at the label. I have had -32, or even up to the mid minus 40s, but never up to this level. Time Machine is sweet, but with enough other flavors, it does not simply taste sweet; instead it has a very comfortable balance.

More astonishing after the first sip is that the layers of sweetness, acidity, and umami finish all at once, just like when a conductor draws the baton up through the air down into a tight circle and everything stops. It leaves no lingering trace of a sweet aftertaste.

I was even more amazed when I poured Time Machine over Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream for some friends at dinner a few weeks later. It was a truly heavenly combination that made everyone at the dinner table quiet down for a couple of seconds after the first bite.

Before I was going to write about this unique bottle, I was going to try it once again. But, I realized I just sent off my last bottle to my sake sensei… Time to get another one.