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New Functionality – select your delivery date

January 5, 2018

Order with confidence!

Being an avid internet shopper myself I know it’s difficult to make yourself available to receive goods when you are not sure when they’ll arrive. We’ve worked hard with out logistics provider to develop a system where you can select a specific day for your delivery. (more…)

Triumphant! IWC Sake Merchant of the Year 2017

July 7, 2017

Tengu Sake IWC Sake Merchant of the Year 2017

I am absolutely thrilled and honoured to announce that Tengu Sake has been awarded IWC Specialist Sake Merchant of the Year 2017!

When I started Tengu Sake I set some guiding principles:

I am delighted that the International Wine Challenge has seen fit to award Tengu Sake Specialist Merchant of the Year for the second time running, specifically for playing a “vital role in raising the profile of sake in Britain.”

As ever it was a fun night at the awards ceremony. Great company and amazing to be recognised along with the breweries who did so well this year, here’s to next 😉

IWC Merchant Awards

Tengu Sake Nominated for IWC Sake Merchant of the Year 2017

June 21, 2017

We’re proud to announce, we’ve been

Shortlisted for IWC Sake Merchant of the Year 2017!

Sake Merchant of the Year 2017

We’re, once again, delighted to be shortlisted for this prestigious award. Last year we were lucky enough to win (maybe two years in a row is too much to hope for!)

The awards dinner is on 6th July in London – we’ll find out then.

Read about last year’s awards dinner here

IWC Merchant of the Year for Sake 2016

July 11, 2016

IWC Merchant of the Year for Sake 2016

We won!

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Shortlisted for IWC Specialist Merchant of the Year

June 10, 2016

IWC Specialist Sake Merchant of the Year 2016

Holy moly! We’ve been shortlisted for Specialist Merchant of the Year 2016!

The International Wine Challenge has been judging wine for 33 years and is accepted as the world’s finest and most meticulously judged wine competition. The IWC receives entries from every corner of the globe and employs a vast number of international wine experts to judge the competition. The results of the IWC are covered by the world’s media, reaching over 1.2 billion people worldwide.

It is a great honour to have been shortlisted in these prestigious awards. In 2014 we were shortlisted for “Innovator of the Year” but, unfortunately missed out on the grand prize. This year we hope to bring it home! We’ll find out at the glitzy awards dinner on 7th July.

Of course, a huge thank you must go out to all our customers. Without you we would be nothing.

Thank you for loving sake and thank you for choosing Tengu Sake!

Incidentally, the IWC has been judging sake – alongside wine – for 10 years now. I am lucky enough to have been a sake judge for three years and this year, to celebrate 10 years, the judging was in Japan (as opposed to the usual London venue). More on this is a later blog.

Is Japan finally safeguarding a national treasure?

June 17, 2015

washed_rice

“What makes sake, sake?”

A good question if I’ve ever heard one, and there are a lot of – some well-defined – answers. However, an interesting aspect is whether, in order to be called sake, it has to be made in Japan or not (for the purposes of this article I’m referring to Japanese sake and emulations thereof). Indeed the Japanese do not even refer to what we call ‘sake‘ as sake at all; instead, they call it nihonshu (日本酒) meaning ‘Japanese alcohol’. (more…)

Updated website & special offer – 25% off

December 12, 2014

Limited offer – 25% off!!! See below for details!

32Now I know you’ve been checking and you’re quite right, the Tengu Sake website has been down for the past couple of days. Why? Because TODAY we’re launching a super-awesome, new version!

“But it looks the same!”, I hear you say. Well, yes, but things behind the scenes are a hell of a lot simpler, plus, there’s some seriously cool new features:

All this whilst retaining the ‘filtering by characteristic’ functionality you love so much on the Sake Shop pages.

To celebrate the launch of the new site I’m running a 25% sale on all sake and sake selections until midnight on 14th December! Just use coupon code xmas25 to claim your 25% discount!

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Happy sake drinking,
– Oliver

Article in Harpers Wine & Spirit Magazine

July 4, 2014

harpers

Off the back of being shortlisted for Innovator of the Year, Harpers Wine & Spirit (the must read publication for the UK wine and spirits trade) wanted an interview.

Check it out here

Shortlisted for ‘Innovator’ award!

June 7, 2014| 5 Comments

Tengu Sake has been nominated for an International Wine Challenge Merchant Award – Innovator of the Year

Direct Merchant of the Year shortlisted

I am absolutely thrilled that Tengu Sake has been nominated for this prestigious award. I started this company about a year ago because I wanted to bring fantastic sake into the UK and make it available and accessible to a non-Japanese-speaking audience. I had lost count of the number of times I had been frustrated with the lack of clear descriptions, tasting notes, etc. available for sake – you literally had to be a expert to understand what the sake you were holding in your hand might taste like – to me that just seemed crazy! I started Tengu Sake to address this (and other!) issues and it is reassuringly awesome that by being shortlisted for this award, other’s recognise our efforts. This the first time a sake company has ever been shortlisted (these things, naturally, are dominated by the wine trade) so I’m delighted we’re in there, reppin’ the sake industry!

For those of you that don’t know, The International Wine Challenge is the world’s most rigorously judged wine competition and has long been a champion of giving sake the recognition it deserves. They introduced sake judging in 2007 and, since then, it has grown to become the biggest sake competition outside Japan, attracting over 700 entries in 2014 (I actually judged for the first time this year but more on that in another blog!).

They also run awards for merchants, there are 16 award categories open to retailers and wholesalers alike.  You can find the full shortlist, us included, for all the awards here.

As you can see we’re up against serious competition – some ‘big boys’ in wine – as I said, this is the first time a sake company has been up for an award (possibly the first time any non-wine company has been) but fingers crossed: who knows.

The results are all announced at an awards dinner on 16th July. Wish me luck!

“Cracking Kurobuta sake selection”

April 24, 2014

Kurobuta

I’ve been working with the team over at Kurobuta for some time now; most noticeably the mighty Head Chef, Scott Hallsworth. Kurobuta started off as a small pop-up on the Kings Road in Chelsea and now, 6 months later and after spectacular reviews, that site’s gone permanent and they’ve opened a new, bigger joint near Marble Arch.

Their food is the business and – according to the Telegraph – so’s their sake (“cracking” actually!) This is just as well since I’m proud to say that both Kurobuta restaurants are supplied, exclusively, by Tengu Sake!

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