When Mona Allen talks about sake with diners in the stylish new dining room of Brush Sushi in Buckhead Village, her descriptions verge on poetic.
During one of my visits to Brush for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s restaurant review, Allen held our table transfixed as she explained how one of her sake selections tasted like the moment when winter starts changing to spring and tender, green shoots of grass begin to grow through the morning frost. Needless to say, everyone had to try a glass.
Allen is the beverage director at Brush and one of the only Black sake sommeliers in Georgia. Her position and expertise make her an outlier in the world of beverage professionals, who tend to be white and male. According to Pronghorn, an organization that supports Black beverage entrepreneurs, Black Americans account for 12% of the country’s alcohol consumers, but only 7.8% of the industry’s workers and 2% of its executives.
Allen was promoted when the sushi restaurant moved from its original Decatur location to its swanky new Buckhead space.
Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Allen’s lyrical tableside presentation partially stems from natural talent, but it’s also the product of diligent study and rigorous evaluation. Presenting her sake list to diners is the tip of the iceberg seen by the customer, a small piece of an impressively large body of knowledge.
In the U.S., wine is much better understood than sake, the national drink of Japan, but the latter is just as complex. Often mislabeled as “rice wine,” sake is brewed from rice, water and yeast in a process more akin to beer. Like wine, sake pairs well with food and offers a wide spectrum of drinking experiences. The final product depends heavily on the ingredients used and the brewer’s process. There are different rice varietals, yeast strains and distinct regional differences, though these are developed from the local culture more than the terroir. Becoming a wine sommelier is notoriously difficult, but the process isn’t much easier for sake.
Allen is certified by the Sake School of America, an organization endorsed by the Sake Service Institute International, Japan’s largest sake sommelier certification organization.
To become certified, Allen had to be tested in person in Secaucus, New Jersey. The test involves three parts: a written portion about the history and theory of sake, in which Allen had to answer about 75 multiple-choice questions about rice varieties, yeast strains and amino acid ratios in just 55 minutes; a blind tasting portion; and a selling and education portion. The tests are given just a couple of times each year in New Jersey and California.
Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Allen’s certification is a major achievement, but just one piece of the puzzle, according to Koji Aoto, a senior sales executive at Savannah Distributing Company and the restaurant’s main sake supplier in Atlanta. A prolific and long-established importer of Asian restaurant products, Aoto said he knows of only one other Black sake sommelier in Georgia.
Aoto, who is a certified sake master himself, said he loves working with Allen because she continues to hone her knowledge of Japanese beverages.
Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“She’s a perfect person because many have a certificate, but they never follow up,” Aoto told the AJC. “She has good taste ... I trust her skills.”
Allen is a relative newcomer to the world of sake who says she fell in love with the drink hard and fast after being elevated to Brush’s beverage director. A native of Lewisville, North Carolina, not far from Winston-Salem, Allen has long worked in restaurants as she pursued acting and has bartended in demanding markets like New York City and New Orleans. She moved to Atlanta in August 2018, and a year later she started as a server at Brush, working her way up from there.
Allen said the lightning bolt hit when she took an in-person sake class at Brush’s chef Jason Liang’s request.
“Once I took that first class, I was hooked,” Allen said.
Just four months later, she traveled to New Jersey to take the sake sommelier certification exam. After her exam was sent to Japan for grading, Allen learned she had passed.
It hasn’t taken long for Allen to become a sake educator in her own right. She and Aoto both mentioned her quarterly sake and cheese tastings, a decidedly non-Japanese pairing designed to show how the versatile beverage can work with a wider range of foods than many Americans might imagine.
On the Brush menu, Allen has created a helpful chart that illustrates different sake flavor profiles. The chart divides the sake world into four quadrants. One axis ranges from light to rich flavor, while the other ranges from low to high fragrance. Locating a specific sake’s flavor profile on the chart can give diners an idea of how to pair it with food.
Allen said she’s proud of the position she’s achieved as one of the few working sake sommeliers in the state regardless of race. In some ways, the public’s lack of familiarity with sake has helped her avoid awkward or racially-charged situations with diners. Sake does not have the Eurocentric, Old World baggage that comes with wine or many spirits, so she finds that people rarely challenge her expertise.
Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Allen might not think of herself as a trailblazer, but she’s happy if her identity can help bring more people into the fascinating and complex world of Japanese beverages.
“I’m always looking at the world through my lens, so anything I can do to get more people excited about sake, that’s what I’m excited about,” Allen said.
“To be a sake somm in Atlanta, in Buckhead Village, I think that is certainly special,” Allen continued. “And I love being me. No matter what I’m doing, I love being me.”
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