Sake · Retailers
Palate Project (formerly Tippsy Sake): what actually changed in 2026
Tippsy Sake became Palate Project in 2026 and cancelled its old Sake Club. Almost every English guide still describes the old company. Here is what is real now.
If you have searched for a sake subscription in the last few months, you have almost certainly read about Tippsy Sake. You may have read that it has a Sake Club with a 5% product discount and 20% off shipping. You may have been sent to tippsysake.com.
All of that is out of date. Here is the current picture, checked in August 2026.
The three things that changed
1. The company is now called Palate Project. The rebrand was announced on 28 April 2026 and rolled out over the following weeks. Tippsysake.com now redirects to palateproject.co. This is a rename, not an acquisition or a closure — the company, the team and the operations are the same. Existing accounts, order history, rewards points and store credit all carried over automatically.
2. The old Tippsy Sake Club is gone. It was cancelled at the end of March 2026, and the member benefits went with it — that 5% product discount and 20% shipping discount you keep reading about no longer exist for anybody.
3. There is a new subscription called Palate Selections. It is a quarterly delivery of a 3-bottle or 6-bottle box, curated by the company's team in Japan.
That is the whole story, and it is why so much of the English-language advice about buying sake online is currently wrong. A large number of "best sake subscription box" articles still recommend a club that was shut down months ago.
Why the rename actually matters
Companies rebrand for all sorts of forgettable reasons. This one tells you something about the product.
The stated reasoning is a shift in mission — from selling sake to helping people taste and judge it honestly. "Tippsy" was a drinking pun. "Palate Project" is a claim about developing your palate. Whether the site lives up to that is a separate question, but the subscription change is consistent with it: a quarterly curated box chosen in Japan is a tasting-education product, where the old club was a discount scheme.
If what you wanted was cheap shipping on bottles you already know, that product no longer exists here. If what you wanted was to be walked through unfamiliar sake by someone who can read the brewery's Japanese material, that is now the thing being sold.
What we could not verify
Pricing for Palate Selections is not stated on the announcement page, and we do not publish numbers we have not checked ourselves. Before you subscribe, look at the current product page for the per-box price, the shipping cost to your state, and the cancellation terms — quarterly subscriptions bill in larger chunks than monthly ones, so the first charge is bigger than people expect.
The catch for most of the world: US shipping only
Palate Project is the largest online Japanese sake store in the United States, and that "in the United States" is doing a lot of work. Alcohol in the US is regulated state by state, and a US retailer cannot ship to you in London, Berlin or Sydney.
This is the single most common way English sake guides waste readers' time: they rank US-only retailers for a global audience.
If you are outside the US, the practical options are different — a UK sake specialist, a Japanese-goods retailer that ships within Europe, or a Japan-based shop that exports directly. Use the region switcher below; we only show shops that can actually deliver to you.
Is it worth it?
Some honest framing, because "best sake subscription" lists rarely give you any.
A curated box is a good idea if you cannot yet read a sake label, you do not have a specialist shop nearby, and you want to find out what you like without spending $40 on a bottle you turn out to dislike. Three or six bottles chosen by someone with brewery access is a reasonable way to cover ground quickly.
It is a bad idea if you already know you want, say, dry junmai from Niigata. At that point you are paying a curation premium to be surprised, and surprises are exactly what you no longer need. Buy the bottles directly.
It is a bad idea as a gift unless you know the recipient drinks sake regularly. Quarterly subscriptions are a commitment, someone has to be home to sign for alcohol deliveries, and sake — especially anything unpasteurised — has real storage requirements. A single good bottle with a note about what it is beats a subscription the recipient forgets to cancel.
Before you buy anything, learn the four words on the label
The genuinely useful skill here is not choosing a retailer, it is reading a label. Junmai, honjozo, ginjo and daiginjo tell you most of what you need, they are defined in Japanese liquor tax law rather than by marketing, and they apply at every shop in every country. Fifteen minutes with those four terms will save you more money than any subscription discount.
We wrote that guide next: Junmai, ginjo, daiginjo: what sake grades actually mean.
Summary
| Claim you will read elsewhere | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|
| The company is called Tippsy Sake | Renamed Palate Project (April–May 2026) |
| Tippsy Sake Club: 5% off products, 20% off shipping | Cancelled end of March 2026 |
| Monthly sake club subscription | Replaced by quarterly Palate Selections, 3 or 6 bottles |
| Your Tippsy account/points are gone | No — accounts, history and points carried over |
| Available internationally | No — ships within the US only |
Last verified 5 August 2026. Sake retail changes quickly; if you find something here that has moved on, tell us and we will recheck it.