A testing ground for breweries entering D.C.
Getting into a new American market usually means convincing a distributor to gamble on you before a single person has tasted the sake. We work the other way around. Send a sample and it goes into a blind tasting in front of about twenty people who drink seriously and remember what they liked.
Nobody in the room sees a brewery, a price or a country until every card is in. That cuts both ways, and it is the reason the feedback is worth having.
- Minimum order
- One case
- Buying cycle
- Seasonal
- Tasting format
- Blind, member scored
- Room size
- About twenty people
- Members
- About a hundred
- Send samples to
- jacob@kasumiclub.com
What you get back
- Honest scoresNobody in the room knew whose bottle it was, so the number is not a favour and it is not a courtesy. Two of the six scores from our first flight are still disputed inside the club, and the arguments are published.
- A case order if it landsWhen a bottle holds up across the room we place an order, usually a case. Those orders repeat, because a member who voted for a bottle keeps buying it.
- A written page either wayEvery bottle we pour gets a page on this site covering the brewery, the rice, the method and what the room said, whether it wins or not. That is a real page on the open web with your name on it, and it stays up.
How the club buys
Kasumi Club is an informal buying group and not a licensed retailer. We do not buy at wholesale, we do not import, and we cannot have a bottle shipped from a brewery to a member. Group orders are placed through a licensed retailer with money collected from members in advance. The reason a club like this exists at all is written up in why the sake in D.C. is the way it is.
What a hundred people ordering together changes is the arithmetic. A case is a number a brewery will ship and a distributor will notice, and it is the smallest unit that makes a one-city order worth anybody's time.
What we have poured so far
One tasting, six bottles, every score published. The full sheet with specifications is on the score sheet.
Momokawa Pearl
SakéOne · Forest Grove, Oregon
4.0 out of 5Okunomatsu Tokubetsu Junmai
Okunomatsu Sake Brewery · Nihonmatsu, Fukushima
3.67 out of 5Hananomai Katana, Extra Dry
Hananomai Brewing Co. · Shizuoka
3.6 out of 5Murai Family Tanrei Junmai
Momokawa Brewing Co. · Oirase, Aomori
3.5 out of 5Kurosawa Junmai Kimoto
Kurosawa Sake Brewery · Yachiho, Nagano
2.0 out of 5Hatsumago
Tohoku Meijo · Sakata, Yamagata
The ones we hear most
How do I get my sake tasted by Kasumi Club?
Email jacob@kasumiclub.com. Samples go into a blind tasting in front of about twenty people in Washington, D.C., and every bottle poured gets a page on this site with its score whether it wins or not.
Does Kasumi Club buy at wholesale?
No. Kasumi Club is an informal buying group, not a licensed retailer. It does not import and cannot have a bottle shipped from a brewery to a member. Group orders go through a licensed retailer with money collected from members in advance.
What is the minimum order?
One case. That is the smallest unit that makes a single-city order worth a brewery's or a distributor's time.
Will a bad score still be published?
Yes. Every bottle poured gets a page with its score whether it wins or not. The lowest score so far is 2.0 out of 5 and it is published with the reasoning.
Who scores the bottles?
The members present on the night, about twenty people. Everyone scores overall impression out of 5 and the published figure is the mean.
Send us a bottle and about twenty people will tell you the truth.
Kasumi Club pours everything blind. Breweries and importers use us to test the D.C. market, and every bottle we pour gets a page with its score, whether it wins or not.
How it works for breweries