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...
NamaFest 2025 was a bona-fide festival! It was twice the size of last year's event, filled with sake lovers from Oakland and beyond to celebrate spring with fresh-pressed, unpasteurized sakes. Ranging from vibrant and lively to earthy and tart, thirteen vendors representing over...
It was a exceptionally warm and sunny day in Oakland for our first ever Awamori Festival in August. It was a success! After spending five days in Okinawa with Yoko back in February, I brought back a suitcase full of bottles and...
So far, this year has been an exciting year of events. And oh boy did y'all show up for NamaFest! It was a smashing event and the rain in the forecast did not deter anyone from celebrating namas from around the world....
The timing worked out perfectly. I was running an Organic Sake theme in April for Sake Gumi, the monthly sake club I program at the shop. So closing out the last day of the month with the...
When we were approached to host a launch event for the new line of The SG Shochus, we were floored. Why, yes, we would honored to host Shingo Gokan and his crew! World-renowned cocktail champion, bartender extraordinaire, and founder of the SG Group and SG Shochu brand, Shingo Gokan was voted by...
It's been two years since we did Sakqueso! in person, and it's GREAT to be back! This year, Kevin Corcoran joined me behind the bar, so we could all eat cheese and drink sake together. The knowledge he offered during the class was both entertaining and...
I read Hannah Kirshner's book Water, Wood, & Wild Things on the Greek Island of Ikaria. The gentle breeze, the occasional rooster cawing in the distance, and the sounds of the Aegean Sea was a perfect soundtrack to this book that follows master makers all around Yamanaka,...
The impetus for our Brooklyn trip was this: a brewery tour and tasting at Brooklyn Kura, a featured sake maker in our ABS (American Born Sake) Sake Gumi theme in April. Both Yoko and I had visited the brewery over the last few years (it only...
We had such a wonderful event with our friends of Daytrip in Oakland for our Sake Gumi members. In conjunction with our sakes from last month's theme Kayoko's Hometown Pairings: Saitama Sakes + Oakland Eats, we partnered with Daytrip to pair the Gumi selections with their dishes. It...
We got a phone call around December 20th that my brother Kei aka Casa de Kei, would be driving up from LA around Christmas. So we sprung at the chance of hosting him on Xmas Eve for a raw bar popup, accompanied by Martinis made by our...
What better way to kick off the holidays than an intimate cocktail party at our bar? We were jazzed to partner with our favorite bar man Chris Lane, currently the Spirits Specialist for Skurnik Wines West, to bring on a night of cocktails made with Iwai...
It's been several years now, since we first met Mayuko Kita of Kita Shuzo in Shiga, Japan. I first saw her at a sake show in San Francisco, it must have been in 2016, at the Toto Washlet showroom of all places. From there, we met her...
Hey all! Ian here. On behalf of the Umami Mart team, I want to thank everybody who came out to our Honkaku Spirits event on the 29th. It was our first time doing an in-person event after essentially a year and a half of curbside bentos,...
It all happened organically, like all things do here at Umami Mart. The other day, Charles Chen, of the wildly popular Basuku Cheesecakes walked in to get some tea from our shop. He was dialing in a new hojicha flavor for a new, seasonal cheesecake. After chatting and catching...
Sake Talk was our first class on sake at our new space. We wanted to create a 3-D version of the sake part of the zine, Sake + Shochu Talk, in seminar form. During this course, we touched on sake types, koji, and serving temperature....
The Hinamatsuri (Girl's Day) celebration was very special this year because it was the first time we threw the event in our new space and it was the first Hinamatsuri for Kayoko's daughter, Mion! This is one of...
We celebrated muroka sakes in January. So what does muroka mean? Muroka is comprised of the following kanji characters, 無 (mu): nothing; 濾過 (roka): filtering, referring to sakes that have not gone through charcoal filtering. You can read more about muroka here,...
It's incredible how successful Den Sake has become in just a short year - while their fanbase is strong in the East Bay, their popularity has soared further after their James Beard nomination. While Yoshi, Den's toji (master brewer) has been brewing sake for...
If you've followed our blog, you know that Kayoko and I went to Shiga prefecture in January, earlier this year. The main reason we went to Shiga was to see Mayuko Kita at her brewery, Kita Brewery. Her entire family was just as warm...
