This year’s Sakqueso sakes and cheeses Sakqueso has been one of those words along with Gumi and Matsuri that have entered the Umami Mart lexicon. It is a portmanteau of the words sake and queso (cheese in Spanish) and refers to our yearly celebration of sake and...
This quarter I feature two shochus that are near and dear to my heart. The first, Yuki Otoko Kasutori, is a bottle we have been waiting for a decade here in the States. We visited its maker Aoki Shuzo in 2015 where we first tasted this shochu,...
This month’s bottles: Kisoji Sanwari + Kirei 89 Hello again, I’m back for another month of koji exploration. Who’s coming with me This month’s theme was again inspired by our visit to Matsuse Shuzo in February, where Yoko and I were able to taste...
Every year we've been in business we've never taken it for granted. Each year has been wildly different and the unpredictably of the world keeps it... interesting. But while things change around us rapidly, we can say with full confidence that the community stays strong here in...
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...
Matsuse Shuzo Toji Keizo Ishika dusting koji spores onto freshly steamed Yamada Nishiki rice.We had the distinct pleasure to return to Matsuse Shuzo again this past February, this time, to watch the complete koji-making process! First, what is koji? Koji is Japan’s national mold and is a...
Howdy! Kayoko here, Yoko’s other half. I’ll be taking over Sake Gumi for the next two installments, exploring the wonderful world of koji with you all. This is an incredibly dense subject and I hope to be able to explain myself in simple terms. This month,...
This month’s sakes tried on the rocks and with soda I write this in mid-June on a typical Bay Area morning, a thick layer of fog blanketing the block with trees swaying violently in the wind. I sit by the windowsill yearning for warmer days to...
After my visit to Komasa Jyozo in February, we got into a car and went about a mile down the road to Kanosuke Distillery. Komasa is a shochu brewery with a nearly 150 year history on the seaside of Kagoshima's Hioki City and its newest...
This quarter, we’re featuring two shochus that are brand new to the U.S., one that is even new in Japan. The other is not new at all: famed Mellowed Kozuru was created in 1957 in Kagoshima and was the first shochu ever to be barrel-aged! So...
Arriving at Heiwa Shuzo as the sun was setting Before visiting Wakayama last August, the only concrete thing I seemed to know about it was that they were famous for their ume. In...
President Toshimitsu Saika of Kokonoe Saika All members of Sake Gumi this month are getting Kokonoe Saika Sake Brewery’s Yamada Nishiki Junmai Daiginjo. Toshimitsu Saika, the president of Kokonoe Shuzo visited us back in 2023, and he took the time...
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...
Arkansas rice being harvested. Photo courtesy of Dassai USA. Ever since 2010, when I was working at Takara Sake’s tasting counter, I’d been hearing about Arkansas sake rice. My supervisor, Izumi Motai, was telling me that Takara had been...
Before meeting Justin Potts, Director of Brewing Relations at Origami Sake Brewery, I heard him on the podcast Sake on Air. I learned a lot about the discussions he participated in. He had lived in Japan for nearly 20...
While Dassai has been a household name in Japan for decades, it's just the beginning of their notoriety in the U.S. Their junmai daiginjos are elegant and iconic, making it one of the few sakes that people actually remember and ask for by name at...
L-R: Me, Miho Imada and Kayoko at the shop in summer of 2024 Miho Imada has been brewing sake at Imada Shuzo since 1994 after taking a crash course in sake brewing at the National Research Institute of Brewing of Japan....
Umami Mart seeks a friendly and punctual team member to personalized customer service. This will be at our shop located at 4027 Broadway in Oakland. This position will be for Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays with opportunity to pick up extra shifts. We are a small, hard-working team...
During our last Japan visit, I made a quick detour down to Kagoshima to visit shochu distilleries. As shochu director of the shop, I've gotta keep up with what's going on in Kyushu! Yoko and I went to Kagoshima nearly 10 years ago and while I...
I’m back from two days in Kagoshima and supremely pumped for shochu –particularly of the imo variety. It is in Kagoshima where the Satsuma Shochu designation is honored, where the sweet potatoes and water must be produced in the region. Additionally, only rice or imo koji may be used.
