Sake Gumi is our monthly sake subscription service with 200 members throughout the country. Join today! Greetings Gumi folks, your whisky liaison and friendly neighborhood Dre is taking over Sake Gumi this month! It's the same feeling as when you played Pokemon Red on your...
Shochu Gumi is our quarterly subscription service with 80+ members throughout the country. Join today! Originating over 600 years ago, awamori predates shochu and is the original zenkoji spirit. This refers to a style where the entire moromi (mash) is made of koji...
On my way back to NY, I had a stop over in Madrid for a few hours. Marta and Jose whisked me from the airport to take me to a...
Sake Gumi is our monthly sake subscription service with 200 members throughout the country. Join today! Ah, June – it’s when summer break kicks in, the days are long, and the tank tops come out. And, if you’ve been a part of our little Umamiverse for a while,...
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...
Walking into a sake brewery is like walking into someone's home. In the old days, it was customary that the kurabito (brewery workers) all stayed in shared housing at the brewery during the brewing season – people traveled from far and wide from their hometowns...
Sake Gumi is our monthly sake subscription service with 200 members throughout the country. Join today! These days, there has been a bit of buzz about blending for sake, with the emergence of bottles blended by legends of the wine world in Europe and Canada....
Yuichiro Kawahito, president of Kawatsuru Brewery in Kagawa, is the epitome of the word genki – he is full of energy and life. He took on the brewery in 2004 after his father, making him the 6th generation owner. I visited Kawatsuru Brewery on a sunny day...
The rice used to make Uka sake, KR55 Koda Farms® Heirloom Organic Kokuho Rose rice is grown in California’s San Joaquin Valley Sake Gumi is our monthly sake subscription service with 200+ members throughout the country. Join today! Since the start of Sake Gumi in 2015, it has been...
Every March at Umami Mart we celebrate women – from little girls for Girl’s Day on March 3, to our fellow small business owners of Oakland, and of course, for both Sake and Shochu Gumi. It’s a month of reflection and a look into the future for women in the...
At the beginning of September of 2022, I had the opportunity to visit a number of shochu distilleries in Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures. For the Kagoshima portion, president and toji (master distiller) of Yamatozakura Shuzo Tekkan Wakamatsu was kind enough to take me in his car to some unmissable...
In September 2022, I had the pleasure of visiting a number of shochu distilleries in Kagoshima and Miyazaki. When I was in Kagoshima, Yamatozakura Shuzo's own Tekkan Wakamatsu took me around by car to three can't-miss handmade shochu distilleries. The last leg of the day was...
Hiroko Yokozawa (L), toji at Tsukinowa Shuzo and Nobuko Inaba (R), toji at Inaba Shuzo Sake Gumi is our monthly sake subscription service with 200 members throughout the country. Join today! It's March which means it's Female Frontrunner's month! Coinciding with International Women's Day and Girl's...
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...
Hamakawa Shoten was the last brewery we went to in Kochi. By that time, we had been in Kochi for four days and we were eating, living, and breathing Kochi. Thankfully, we were over our intense hangover that we were slogging through the day before at...
My first brewery visit in Kochi this past month was at Mutemuka Shuzo. The next morning I went to Kameizumi Shuzo. I first learned about Mutemuka in 2018 through Floating World. I fell in love with the their Mutemuka Muroka Nama Genshu. It was lactic, mushroomy,...
After visiting Kameizumi Shuzo in the morning, we were off to Suigei Brewing Co.'s Tosa facility that was about 20 minutes away. It was a relief to have such a short commute between destinations for a change. When I set up all of these brewery...
Kameizumi Shuzo was my second brewery visit during my Kochi Prefecture tour this past month. The day before, I had visited Mutemuko Shuzo in Shimanto City. After Mutemuka Shuzo, we made our way to Kochi City (about 90 minutes away) and had a very authentic Kochi night...
The Shiman Torocco one-man-car that brought us into Kochi Prefecture from Ehime Prefecture Sake Gumi is our monthly sake subscription service with 200 members throughout the country. Join today! I hightailed it out of Oakland the...
Thermometer at the fermentation room at Kita Shuzo during our 2019 visit Sake Gumi is our monthly sake subscription service with 200 members throughout the country. Join today!
