Sake has become a passion for me, an area of the sommelier career I love and want to keep improving.
The International Kikisake-shi course is a course provided by the SSI in Japan for sommeliers or anyone interested in knowing all the basics and more advanced works in production, tasting, matching and service of sake.

In London, Enshu, is the only academy providing this formation and certification. Satomi-san director of Enshu, is a very well known figure in the hospitality business in London and beyond. With an awesome CV and background, she passed to me all the dedication, expertise, passion and knowledge during this highly recommendable course.

I am not part of the hospitality industry, but I am very glad to have joined the Kikisake-shi course.

As an sake enthusiasts, it is very useful to be able to pick novel sake that suit my taste, and pair the right sake with the meal. During my trip in Japan, this new power had brought me a new dimension of joy.

This course is challenging but Satomi and Oliver did a lot to help us. We sampled a wide range of sake to calibrate our senses for the blind tasting, and they shared course notes that compliments the course materials. Satomi and Oliver delivered the course professionally, and gave us many off-the-book knowledge to compliment it.

Do take the challenge if you’re serious about sake!

Throughout the course, Satomi san was very supportive and the every class was an absolute joy to attend.

I believe her knowledge and passion for sake is second to none. Thanks to Satomi san, I am now a qualified Kikisake-shi/Master of Sake, which has given me the ability, tools and confidence to be a successful Sake Sommelier.

The Kikisake-shi course was concise and intensive over three days, which was well organised.

The comprehensive tasting of different sake styles and focus on sake service is useful for those selling sake.

The Class was very interesting and easy to understand the complexity of Sake.

As recognition of Sake increases more and more, this Kikisake-shi qualification helps not only myself but the industry. Satomi-san is very helpful throughout the course I will recommend other staffs to take

As a non professional sake enthusiast I found the course both informative and in parts challenging.

I have attended many sake seminars and events over the years, however, the course and the expert tutors, Satomi-san and Oliver, provided the foundation and context to enable me to retain far more detailed knowledge.

I found the tasting element of the course to be the most beneficial as it provided me with a framework for evaluating sake and appreciating some of its complexities. I hope this will hold me in good stead when experimenting with different styles and varieties of sake in the future.

As a restaurant group, with sake listed on all our wine-lists, the quality of sake training is very important to us.

We are very pleased with the SSI Master of Sake course, and feel it is just right for our senior sommeliers. We particularly like the way that tasting is taught: it enables our staff to describe sake quickly and simply in a way that our guests find very helpful. The course is challenging but achievable, and thankfully it’s very enjoyable too!

I love Japan and sake but had very little knowledge about sake as it is a dense and complex landscape. This course made it easy for me to break into the fundamentals and quickly get advanced knowledges to fuel a lifelong passion for learning about sake!

Thank you.

ありがとう

The class was wonderful.

Definitely worth the experience of traveling from Toronto to take the course. Both teachers, Mrs. Dosseur and Mr. Hilton-Johnson, were very professional, insightful, and have an active working knowledge of the industry. As someone taking the course to enrich her personal knowledge of sake the text book was very easy to understand and straight forward. It focuses more on the commercial/retail sales side of the business. Anywhere you would be selling the product to customers you could put your Kikisake-shi knowledge to use. Not being in the business I found this aspect of sake awareness very exciting.

The great bonus, that I have come to realize after taking other sake course, is the pleasurable opportunity to meet other sake lovers from around the world.

I would absolutely recommend this course to those in the industry or those just looking to improve upon their existing sake knowledge.

I’m so glad that I’ve taken the Kikisake-Shi course at Enshu.

The syllabus is well-structured and balanced, covering pretty much everything one needs to know about sake without having us feel overwhelmed. The course combines theory with practice and offers some fascinating insights into the realm of sake thanks to Satomi-san’s and Oliver’s hands-on experience as sake professionals in the hospitality and F&B industries. Having completed the WSET Level 3 Sake programme (whose focus is on sake production) prior to this course, I feel that the History and Sake Service components of the Kikisake-Shi programme provide a perfect complement and help eliminate some of the blind-spots in my sake study.

I highly recommend the Kikisake-Shi course to anyone wishing to learn more about this captivating Japanese tipple.

As an author of a sake blog, I wanted to get a better understanding of all aspects around sake: its history, how it is made, the tasting vocabulary and serving tips. The International Kikisake-shi course was a great opportunity for me to do it in a small group of like-minded people and to learn from the well-known sake experts in London: Satomi and Oliver. The course was very comprehensive but not overly technical, taught in an interactive manner and rather informally. I always had an opportunity to ask questions during the class if I needed more details. Apart from usual presentations, the course included role-play exercises, discussions, videos and a lot of sake tasting!

I really enjoyed doing the International Kikisake-shi course and would recommend it to anyone, who wants to either work in the sake industry in various capacity or to get a thorough understanding of sake.