Sake: As American as California Wine : Beverages: Demand for the Japanese national drink is soaring in the United States. Japan-based companies are building production facilities in the state to meet the demand.

The newest wine produced in the Napa Valley is very different from all the others, for it isn’t made from the grapes for which the valley is famous.

The wine is sake, and it is brewed from rice instead.

Kohnan Inc.’s $6-million Hakusan Sake brewery opened in Napa last month to become the fourth sake production facility in California.

Sales of Japan’s national drink are soaring in America, especially in California. And Japanese companies are building sake wineries in this country to meet the demand.

The popularity of the rice wine, the history of which goes back 2,000 years, reflects the ever-growing number of sushi bars and Japanese restaurants in the United States. There were more than 3,000 of them at last count, with the largest concentration, at least 800, in the Los Angeles area and another 400 in the Bay Area.

Surveys show that 80% of the sake consumed in this country is bought in Japanese restaurants, with the rest purchased in liquor and grocery stores.

Toyokichi Hombo, 87, an industrialist from Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, built the new Hakusan winery in Napa with the aim of creating an American-brewed sake to rival Japan’s premium brands, according to Hakusan publicist Ronda Rhoads.

The rice wine is the traditional drink at important occasions in Japan. Brides and grooms consecrate their vows by drinking sake from the same cup three times, and a special sake is drunk on New Year’s Day for good health, good luck and long life.

The other California sake wineries are Ozeki Sake, a subsidiary of Japan’s third-largest sake company, with a winery in Hollister since 1979; Takara Sake U.S.A., which has been producing sake in Berkeley since 1982, and American Pacific Rim Co.’s California Ki-Ippon Sake, which is made at a winery in Vernon that started production in late 1988.

A fifth sake winery, scheduled to open in October, is under construction in Folsom by Gekkeikan Sake Co. of Kyoto, founded in 1637. It is the largest and one of the oldest of Japan’s 2,400 sake producers. Hakushika, the eighth-largest sake company in Japan, has purchased land near Denver to build a winery there.

The only other sake company in the United States, Honolulu Sake Co., has been operating in Hawaii since 1908 and was the first sake winery established outside Japan. It has been a subsidiary of Takara since 1986.

Sake production on the U.S. mainland began in 1976, when Take Numano, a native of Japan, purchased the large Challenge Dairy building a few blocks west of the UC Berkeley campus, converted it into a brewery and began producing Numano Sake.

“I had been in the sake-importing business in California since 1963,” Numano recalled recently. “As the price of the yen rose, so did the cost of sake. Sake from Japan became so expensive, I decided to make it here.”

He said he produced 100,000 gallons of sake a year until 1982, when he sold the winery to Takara Sake, a 150-year-old Kyoto company. By 1985, Ozeki and Takara were selling more U.S.-made sake in this country than was being imported from Japan.

Last year, domestic brewers produced 61% of the 1.8 million gallons of sake consumed in this country, with the rest of it coming from Japan.

Takara ranked first among the domestics with 580,000 gallons produced in 1989. Ozeki was next, with 260,000 gallons, followed by American Pacific Rim, 150,000 gallons, and Honolulu Sake, 100,000 gallons.

“Sake has a short shelf life and is extremely vulnerable to sunlight and heat. It is at its best when it is consumed soon after being bottled,” said Tomio Kondu, director of the Ozeki plant at Hollister.

“That’s why old-line companies like Ozeki are producing sake in California, where the rice is as good as that grown in Japan and seven times cheaper, and the water is excellent. And sake produced here is fresh from the winery, unlike the imported product that takes six months to get to the marketplace in the U.S.”

It takes five to six months from the beginning of the brewing process until sake is poured into bottles and casks and shipped to market. The rice has to be milled, polished, washed, soaked, steamed, fermented and pressed. The brew is then pasteurized, aged for five months, clarified and blended.

“We did a survey to find out who is drinking sake” in the United States, said Rhoads, the Hakusan publicist. “The survey showed a much younger crowd than we anticipated. The biggest users of the product are in their 20s and 30s.

“Sake drinking is a cult with young people at sushi bars and Japanese restaurants. Market indicators show sake will become a major drink of the ‘90s as people continue to move away from high-alcohol distilled spirits.”

Sake, she also noted, has an alcoholic content of 16%, which is more than dry dinner wines made from grapes but less than sweet varieties such as port.