Any drink that contains ethanol, a psychoactive drug that has a depressant effect. Drinking too much of it can cause drunkenness. Possible health effects can include the increased risk for cancer, alcoholism, liver cirrhosis, depression, ataxia, and many more.
The word sake (酒) specifically refers to the rice wineonly when it is used as a loanword. In native Japanese, sake is used as a general word for all alcoholic beverages. Nihon-shu (日本酒) is also somewhat more rarely used as a native disambiguation. Therefore, care should be taken when tagging based on retrieved tag translations.
