Choya sake on the list

In the next few weeks I expect to mostly be posting about the new introductions to our list.

Here's one of the more exotic feathers in our cap to be going on with. We have become agents for Choya, who make plum wine and sake. Have a look at their website, where you used to be able to learn how to ask for your Choya product in Japanese! There's a lot of interest in sake in Ireland at the moment, and plum wine's not far behind because of some award-winning cocktail mixing from Irish barmen developing an established theme. Saketini, anyone?

This is as good a place as any to return to the Thirsty Travel(l)er's trip to Japan, for those of you who missed it first time around. Nobody does artless, exuberant inquisitiveness like a certain kind of American. Get this - how sake is made.

I must confess to not having tried the Choya range yet. I'm a bit sampled out at the moment because we've finally been catching up with our backlog of tasting new suppliers' offerings and checking new vintages from established suppliers. If I get around to the Choya products, I'll post my two penn'orth in due course, though I can't help feeling the sakes &c. need a whole new vocabulary I don't yet got. Here's a press-release-looking page, aimed at the USA, that may or may not encourage you to give the stuff a try:



It's great to find new customers because of selling sake - it's better still when sake is a foot in the door while we tell people about what else we're proud of. Our newly nipped'n'tucked list of wines is looking radiantly spring-fresh; no, really.

And as for iKi beer - when we chose just one beer to represent, it looks as though we chose the right one! It's proving really popular, and because there's a story to tell (green tea, marketing with a thick Japanese accent, &c. &c.) people talk about it. And, unless you're all being unreasonably polite, that's what keeps you coming back to BB: the story, feeling involved, making an informed choice, the human side.