First Annual Shochu Live
We are still on a high after hosting our first annual Shochu Live – America's first and only shochu festival! With breweries and importers from Japan and all across the U.S., 120 guests tasted 25 shochus (and one awamori!). What a phenomenal event!
Guests sipped, kanpai'd, and learned a lot about shochu under the hot Oakland sun. It was a glorious event and so glad so many shochu novices and enthusiasts came out for this.
Shochu Live was an idea I hatched with Skurnik Wine + Spirits Japanese Beverage Portfolio Manager Jamie Graves (pictured below with Yanagita-san) at Sake Day last year. We wondered, "could shochu someday have an event as huge as Sake Day?!???!" This: as in an event with thousands of guests who fly in from all over the States, selling out tickets and hotel rooms months in advance. Why, yes, shochu can!
For this first year, I called on our friend Mr. Tadashi Yanagita of Yanagita Shuzo in Miyazaki. He visited our bar a few years ago and we had chatted about doing a big shochu event in Oakland together. Once he was on board, the event all came together!
YANAGITA SHUZO
Yanagita Aokage 41 "Thoroughbred Stallion" Genshu (Barley)
Yanagita Koma "Colt" (Barley)
PLUS, limited edition sweet potato and barley shochu suitcase specials!
Mr. Yanagita is a vibrant, passionate shochu maker who trekked out all the way to Oakland to share his knowledge and love of shochu. Although he is mostly known for barley shochus here in the States, he also makes killer imo shochus that are available in Japan only. He built a special aging facility at his brewery just for sweet potatoes, where they sit and ripen for many months! We were so lucky to have him and some of his stellar imo shochus here, which everyone confessed were among their favorites of the event. We hope he returns next year!
HIGH ROAD SPIRITS
Daiyame (Sweet Potato)
Daiyame 40 (Sweet Potato)
SG Imo (Sweet Potato)
SG Kome (Rice)
Tsutsumi Taru 12yr (Rice)
We love everything imported by High Road Spirits, and of course our party would not have been complete with our pal Chris Lane, content manager for High Road, pouring drinks at the booth. Daiyame shochu is an extremely popular shochu across the world and it's often the gateway shochu for our customers.
MIZU SHOCHU
Mizu Sakura Cask (Barley)
Mizu (Barley)
Mizu Green Tea (Barley)
Taeko Ichioka, one of the partners of Mizu, flew all the way from New York to be with us for the event. We first met when we hosted a Happy Hour event earlier this year. Mizu shochus are made with barley in Saga, Kyushu. The Sakura Cask Shochu continues to be a shop favorite!
HONKAKU SPIRITS
Yamatozakura (Sweet Potato)
Shoro Black (Barley)
Shigamasu (Kasutori)
Selephant (Kokuto)
Chuko Yokka Koji Awamori
We were so lucky to have Jake Tennenbaum here from the east coast to pour several bottles imported by Honkaku Spirits. It was the Yamatozakura flagship imo shochu debut! Honkaku imports shochus made with all sorts of ingredients, so we chose a range of different shochus that showcase varying flavor profiles. Plus, one of our fave awamoris!
SKURNIK WINE + SPIRITS
Watanabe Yuki No Mannen "Snow Penguin" (Sweet Potato)
Kuroki Honten Kiroku Muroka (Sweet Potato)
Kodama Toji Junpei Beni Imo Crimson (Sweet Potato)
Although Jamie Graves mainly focuses on sakes for the Skurnik portfolio, he is an avid shochu enthusiast with awesome shochu makers on his roster, including Yanagita Shuzo. He mainly wanted to showcase all the special sweet potato shochus in his portfolio, including the super limited Kiroku Muroka and Yuki No Mannen.
KIRISHIMA SHUZO
Kirishima 8 (Sweet Potato)
Kuro Kirishima (Sweet Potato)
PLUS, aged sweet potato shochu suitcase special!
Kirishima Shuzo is one of the largest shochu makers in Japan, incidentally located in the same town in Miyazaki as Yanagita Shuzo. It was great to have both a super huge distillery at our event alongside a smaller, micro-distillery like Yanagita (think Budweiser vs Original Pattern). Guests were able to talk directly to folks from Kirishima, who make sweet potato shochu. They even created a sweet potato recently called Kirishima 8, and made a super fruity No. 8 shochu which I featured for our latest shochu club bottle. Everyone loved this one!
Kei is always coming out and feeding us incredibly fresh, stunning dishes. For Shochu Live, we asked him to make his signature ceviche – the perfect accompaniment to an ice cold glass of shochu on a hot day!
We met DJ Wiley through our friend Troy and he kept us going with City Pop and funk during the four hours under the sun. It was perfect!
HOW TO DRINK SHOCHU SEMINAR W. YANAGITA SHUZO
Besides the shochu tastings, we wanted to add an educational aspect to this event, so we enlisted Mr. Yanagita to give a seminar on how to drink shochu. At first we were going to have it at the bar, but so many people RSVP'd that we just held it outside!
Mr. Yanagita gave us detailed instructions on drinking shochu on the rocks, with hot water (oyuwari), and taught us all how to properly make a highball. Very important!
We'll need to work on the AV equipment for this next year and perhaps take it into the bar area (as originally planned) so people are in a more comfortable space. But all in all, it was an excellent seminar and everyone enjoyed it. We all learned a lot about how to drink shochu!
For the tasting, we handed out a drinks list to all of the guests so they could take notes on what they liked.
We set up a little info booth for people to explore more about shochu, complete with a visual example of a sweet potato, sodas for DIY highballs, and Japanese magazines featuring shochu.
Guests and all our Shochu'sday regulars kept themselves busy tasting, eating, tasting.
And why did we name it "Shochu Live"? Well, Yoko and I just thought it was a fun name. But to take it to the next level, we did make some "live" footage on our Instagram feed. We'll need to improve on this next year as the sound was pretty bad, but it was a good start.
Big thank yous to all our guests and vendors who traveled wide and far for America's first shochu festival! Thank you staff and volunteers for all the extra support for the event. Special thank you to Mr. Yanagita for coming from Miyazaki and teaching us all how to drink shochu.
And our very first Shochu Live is in the books! We'll see you all next summer for Volume 2!
photos by Patrick Lu
