Our guest is Tomo Matsushita who is the spirit sommelier at Copper & Oak in the Lower East Side, New York. Spirits are very popular in the U.S. If you look at the alcohol beverage market in 2021, beer was the most popular, which accounted for 43% of the market. Spirits were almost as popular as beer and their market share was 41%, and the remaining was mostly wine. Spirits are delicious but if you don’t know much about them, it is hard to choose what to drink. Tomo is the expert who can help you not only to choose what spirit and what brand, but also to understand the story behind each label. At Copper & Oak, he serves 1,400 labels of spirits. Tomo’s passion and knowledge of spirits are well-recognized in the global spirits industry and he received the title of the Icon of Whisky 2021. As you may know, Japanese whisky has been one of the hottest categories of spirits in recent years, and Copper & Oak carries 130 Japanese whisky labels. In this episode, we will discuss Tomo’s unique background outside being a spirits sommelier, why Japanese whisky is distinct from other types of whisky like Scotch and Bourbon, different categories of Japanese whisky, how to taste Japanese whisky, and much, much more!!!

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