Kasumi Club

The Club

We pooled 100 people and started ordering by the case.

The interesting sake in America goes to restaurants in New York and LA, or to distributors who sell by the pallet. If you lived in D.C. and wanted a single-tank junmai from a 200-year-old kura in Shimane, nobody was returning your call. Volume solves that problem. A hundred people placing one order gets the same attention as a Manhattan restaurant with a sake list.

Members show up, pour blind, argue about what they're drinking, and vote on which bottles earn a case order. The name means "mist" in Japanese, after the cloudy nigori style this group won't stop reordering.

How It Works

Three steps, every season.

一

Source

Family kura in rural Niigata, craft breweries in Brooklyn, jizake importers who bring in bottles most American distributors skip. We reach out, ask what they're brewing, and request samples of whatever they're proudest of.

二

Taste

Members pour blind and say what they think. We get into seimaibuai, koji propagation, whether the brewery used a kimoto or yamahai starter and why that matters. The conversation is half the point.

三

Buy

When a sake holds up across the room, we place a case order. Breweries pay attention because the volume is real. One sample has a habit of becoming a standing seasonal order.

What We Pour

We taste across the full range, but our members keep reaching for sake where more of the process stayed intact.

にごり酒

Nigori

Pressed through open mesh so the rice solids carry into the bottle. The texture ranges from barely hazy to dense and opaque. What makes good nigori worth seeking out is acidity, enough of it to keep that natural sweetness moving through the finish.

生酒

Namazake

Unpasteurized, sometimes with a faint natural carbonation from residual fermentation. You can taste the difference in the first sip, a brightness and energy that disappears once a sake gets heat-treated. Most nama is gone by early summer, which is part of why people care about finding it.

生酛・山廃

Kimoto & Yamahai

Two yeast starter methods that take four weeks rather than two, giving wild microbes time to contribute during early fermentation. Kimoto tends rounder and more savory. Yamahai runs gamey and complex. About 10% of Japanese breweries still use either process.

無濾過原酒

Muroka Genshu

Straight from the press at its natural 17-20% ABV, with all the original color and body intact. This is the fullest expression of what the toji spent months building into the moromi fermentation.

For Breweries & Importers

Send us your sake.

We're building our lineup for next season and looking for breweries and importers who want a dedicated buyer in D.C. Our members' palate runs broad, from clean daiginjo to funky yamahai to thick, sweet nigori. What they all share is that they know what they're tasting and they remember what they liked.

Ship us samples. They'll go into a blind tasting alongside everything else we're evaluating. The bottles that earn it get a case order, and our reorder rate is high because members stay loyal to the sake they chose themselves.

jacob@kasumiclub.com

100+

Active Members

Case

Minimum Order

Seasonal

Buying Cycle