Wednesday 18th November – Sake Basics It’s been a while since I did an absolute basics for sake so, if you’re new to sake and just want to find out more then this is the session for you! You don’t even need to order any sake for this one, just tune in and find out […]

A new lockdown brings a new slew of online tutored tastings! We’ve got three brand new sessions to take us up until the end of the lockdown on 2nd December (let’s see how that statement dates). Take advantage of our 15% sale and order your sakes now. If you want to join any of the […]

Now we’re fully restocked (phew! Sorry about that folks) it’s time we got our online sake tastings programme going again. We’ve got four fantastic new sessions scheduled on Wednesdays at 7pm – 8pm through September and October. Order your sake while and sale is on and join in! Wednesday 16th September – Warm Sake “What […]

The last round of online tastings proved popular so I thought we’d run another four after next week’s. Thus far the lectures accompanying the tasting have been somewhat technical so I wanted to take the opportunity to focus more on tasting and on fundamentals (there’ll still be some ‘meat’ for the geeks out there!). These […]

I thought it would be fun to do some tutored tastings online via Zoom so I’ve put together a little timetable of four online sessions, one per week, starting at 7pm, from 15th April so everyone has plenty of time to order the sake. Wednesday 15th April – Gozenshu 1859 Prototype – a delve into namazake Wednesday […]

Last Saturday (15th June) Tengu Sake exhibited six sakes from three different producers at the Wing Gang’s London Summer Festival in London. I had actually participated in a previous Wine Gang show (in 2013). I was a lone table amongst many, many wine companies and – given that setting – I found the punters not […]

This is just a random musing but do you need to allow some sake to breathe? I’ve been spending time with some pretty highly polished sakes recently. Tatenokawa has some sakes polished to 1%, 8% and 18%, for example, and I’ve noticed that these sakes tend to be better the next day. What’s going on […]

  Zenith is the English name for Tatenokawa’s newest sake, a Junmai Daiginjo, made with Dewasansan rice, polished all the way down to 1%. That’s just 1% of the rice grain left after months of polishing. No-one has ever accomplished this before. To celebrate, we invited Naomi-san from Tatenokawa to come over to the UK, […]

Best conditions for Storing Sake   Often I get asked the best way to store sake, this is particularly important during the festive or other gift-giving seasons as sake can often sit around for a while. I guess the first thing to address is how long sake lasts, so please read my How Long Sake […]

Sake will, of course, last longer when it is stored correctly. The question of how long sake lasts is actually quite difficult to answer and, certainly, there are a few breweries experimenting with ageing and maturing sake longer than what we traditionally consider a ‘safe’ or ‘wise’ period. This process is distinct from koshu (intentionally […]