IntroductionWelcome to
Everyday Sake, a handbook for answering all your burning questions about sake. Whether you are just embarking upon your sake journey or are already in it at full throttle, we hope this book will become your go-to guide on everything about this Japanese drink, from choosing and serving sake to enjoying, pairing, and storing it. Perhaps you are a wine lover or a gourmand looking to expand your palate and beverage horizons; maybe you are a beer brewer; or perhaps you have traveled to Japan and enjoyed sake there. No matter what your own experience has been, we wrote this book to meet you where you are, with real-life scenarios that we hear about every day in our sake shop in Oakland, California.
It is always our aim to get people to consider sake as an accompaniment for anything that they might be having for dinner, not just for sushi—from pasta and pizza to burgers and taco night. Thus spawned the idea for
Everyday Sake, a book that invites sake into your life as an option alongside wine or beer. We consider sake to be an approachable, fuss-free drink that should not be reserved for special occasions or break the bank. As a bonus, premium sake is a nearly additive-free beverage—it is strictly regulated and can be made only with water, yeast, koji, and rice (read on, if you dare, for a possible fifth ingredient). Stabilizers or sulfites cannot be added for longer shelf life, like some wines, which makes sake an extremely transparent beverage. Although that may seem to mean sake is uncomplicated, the fact that you can extract such a wide range of flavors from so few ingredients is astonishing and thrilling.
We started selling sake in 2015, three years after opening our shop, Umami Mart, in downtown Oakland. At first, we specialized in Japanese barware, with the dream of eventually selling sake and other drinks from Japan. Once we obtained the necessary licenses for selling alcohol, we were off and running—and we have never looked back. We’ve become a sake destination for the Bay Area and beyond, and we have helped thousands of customers find bottles to enjoy at home or at a restaurant. Our sake club, Sake Gumi, has expanded our own knowledge of sake thanks to our monthly outreach and interviews with brewers and professionals in Japan. In 2019, we opened a bar inside the shop, where guests can unwind and learn more about sake. We take our role as stewards of sake culture seriously and are grateful for how much sake has enriched our own lives.
Just like wine and beer, sake is a fermented beverage meant to be paired with food or enjoyed on its own. It is highly aromatic, drinks wonderfully in a wine glass, and complements a variety of cuisines. It boasts a wide range of flavors and expressions: from extra dry to lusciously sweet, from crisp to as viscous as porridge, from transparent in hue to golden, which makes it pairable with all types of cuisines, from pizza and burgers to roasted chicken and pasta Bolognese.
So, think of
Everyday Sake as a book that will act as a sake concierge for you: helping you choose the best sake for any dinner, gift, or special occasion, all while equipping you with some basic knowledge so you can confidently talk the sake talk.
How To Use This Book This book was created not as an intimidating tome, but as a way to help make serving and enjoying sake more practical in your daily life. With many years of selling sake under our belt, online and in real life, we are here to answer the questions you may have, like: Can I use a wine glass for sake? Is hot sake bad? Can I have cheese with sake? How long can I keep an opened bottle? You’ll find the answers to all these questions and more here.
We reeled in our longtime friend and collaborator Anders Arhoj of Copenhagen to take you visually through the book in an imaginative yet relatable way. We hope that, as with any treasured cookbook or guidebook, you open this book often—go ahead and dog-ear it and make notes on its pages! Whether you are a novice or longtime sake lover, we want this book to be a trusty resource.
The book is organized into simple chapters that start with the fundamentals, then go on to practical tips and advice on how to taste, choose, pair, and serve sake. If you want to read the book from cover to cover, knock yourself out! We’ve peppered in some sidebars and other sections with extra information, tips, and how-tos. And charts! Boy, we’ve got charts. These are meant to make more complex information crystal clear and easy to digest. Let’s do this!
About Us Hello! We’re Yoko and Kayoko, founders of Umami Mart, a Japanese drinks store in Oakland, California. We were childhood friends growing up in Cupertino, and we reconnected through our love of food in our twenties when we were living on opposite sides of the globe (Yoko in Tokyo and Kayoko in Brooklyn). From our cramped cubicles, we started a food blog together (yup, called Umami Mart on Blogspot!), and from there, we both moved back to the Bay Area, where we dreamed of leaving our jobs and running Umami Mart full-time.
Through our visits to countless sake breweries all over Japan and the U.S., hundreds of tastings with importers and distributors, and daily conversations with our customers, we were able to collectively curate what is now one of the best sake selections in the country. More importantly, we are able to talk about every bottle on our shelves, and to make pairing and temperature suggestions according to our customers’ own preferences. Umami Mart has become a destination for sake and tastings, where customers visit from far and wide to discover their next favorite bottle while chatting about their favorite places for ramen. (We have opinions: Perhaps try soba or udon instead!)
As a certified kikizakeshi (sake sommelier), Yoko has been the director of Umami Mart’s sake program since 2015, meticulously stocking the shelves and leading our monthly Sake Gumi club with creative tasting notes, videos, and interviews with brewers. Yoko’s sake journey began in Tokyo in 2006, when she had her first sip of Shinkame junmai. But it wasn’t until 2010, when she took a job behind the sake-tasting counter at Takara Sake in Berkeley, that her love of sake blossomed. There she worked with Izumi Motai, whose infectious passion for everything sake, from izakaya history to koji, showed her that there was a whole wide world of sake out there for her to learn about. Her journey as a sake student continues as she follows the makers who inspire her, including Miho Imada of Imada Shuzo and Keizo Ishida of Matsuse Shuzo.
Kayoko’s deep appreciation of sake is thanks to her dad, who is a selfproclaimed “Junmai Guy” and arbiter of all things sake. After spending the 2000s in New York, eating and drinking her way through the city and blogging about it, she returned to the Bay Area to bartend at Camino, a restaurant in Oakland. While Kayoko is Umami Mart’s shochu director, she regularly tags along with Yoko to visit sake breweries in Japan, edits all the club tasting notes, and writes about aruten sake and aged sakes for the club. Honjozos are her jam.
Copyright © 2026 by Yoko Kumano and Kayoko Akabori. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
