Sake, also spelled "saké" ( , also referred to as "Japanese rice wine"), is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name "Japanese rice wine", sake, and indeed any East Asian rice wine (such as huangjiu and cheongju), is produced by a brewing process more akin to that of beer, where starch is converted into sugars which ferment into alcohol, whereas in wine, alcohol is produced by fermenting sugar that is naturally present in fruit, typically grapes.