Tokyo Whisky & Spirits Competition 2023 entries start September 1

2023 will be the fifth year of Tokyo Whisky & Spirits Competition! It’s my third year serving on the Executive Committee and as a judge for both rounds of the Western Spirits and Shochu Divisions.

The more I travel to bars across Japan, the more bartenders I run into who are familiar with the Tokyo Whisky & Spirits Competition. As far as I can tell, name recognition of the competition has even exceeded that of the event’s organizers, the Japan Whisky Research Center.

2022’s competition saw a whopping 800 entries across two divisions: 519 in the Western Spirits Division and 281 in the Shochu Division. To ensure each bottle gets judged by an appropriate number of judges, the judge pool was also quite large, with over 300 judges from across the country. For more about 2022’s competition, see our recent article!

As one of Asia’s largest spirits competitions, 2023 returns again with an ambitious plan for hybrid judging. The first round will be remote, and the second round will be in-person. Of course, experience has taught us that covid might also force the second round to be judged remotely. We’ll see!

Click here for the English press release (PDF)

If you’re reading this article and interested in entering your bottles into the competition, click here for the English entry guide. If you need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

For 2023, we’re looking to expand the content offering of TWSC. This means you’ll see a YouTube channel for TWSC launch on September 1, 2022. Hopefully, I’ll also be working with the TWSC team to improve the competition’s website.

Also, there’s a big TWSC-related event, open to the public, slated to happen in late October this year in Tokyo. Stay tuned for details!