When the shape of the flavour radar is close, the taste is close too. A map of the 321 sake that have all five axes and a score, arranged by shape. Two axes place a sake in a cell and the remaining three appear as the shape inside it — so the five axes are never flattened onto a plane.
The darker a cell's green, the more sake it holds (the number is the count)
Cells with at least one sake at 90 and above
The pentagon in a cell is that cell's average shape. Tap a cell and its contents appear below
High-scoring sake sit towards the floral and rich side. Of the 42 sake at 90 and above, 38 (90%) are Floral 4 or higher and 31 (74%) are Rich 4 or higher. The averages for Crisp and Dry, on the other hand, barely differ from the whole set (Crisp 3.50→3.45, Dry 3.00→2.90). What separated the high scores was not crispness or dryness but a floral aroma and a rich taste.
The five-axis combinations (taste types) come to 185. Of those, 131 appear in only one of the 321 sake. So the map is built not to “gather identical types” but to “follow close shapes”.
“Close” is set at up to one axis off by one step. At this line the median number of neighbours is 12 and a spread of scores appears. Restricting it to exact matches leaves many sake with only one companion, so there is no point in separating them by overall score (131 of the 321 have a five-axis combination that is theirs alone). 15 sake have no neighbours at all, and the most any sake has is 37.
The score is layered on as an axis separate from taste. It orders what is inside a cell and inside the neighbours, highest overall score first. That ordering answers which of the similar-tasting sake is the better bet.
No compression to two dimensions (principal component analysis and the like) is used. Squashing five axes into two loses information, so position is left to two axes alone and the rest is carried in the shape of the mini radar. This definition of “close” is exactly the same calculation as Similar sake on the detail pages.
The map covers the 321 sake that have both all five radar axes and a score (of the 321, 321 have a complete radar and 321 also have a score). Names in green are the 321 sake that have a detail page. Distance for “close” is measured the same way as Similar sake on the detail pages.