The joint consultant of Ór Síleis, Katsuhiko Tanaka, is the third generation of the family, which has been running spirits business in Japan. His grandmother devoted herself to sake and food business in 1925, and became the pioneer and best entrepreneur in the industry. She established a solid foundation for the family business.
Mr. Tanaka’s father took over the family business in 1950s, and at that time in Japan, it was necessary to have the license issued by the government in order to run an alcohol business. In addition, different alcohols needed to have different licenses. It was extremely difficult to get these licenses due to strict censorship. However, the Tanaka family managed to be one of the few suppliers with three legal alcohol licenses. It was also the time that the Tanaka family started selling wines and whiskies.
It was very popular to drink blended whisky in Japan in 1980s, and only few bars served single malt whisky. At that time, Mr. Katsuhiko Tanaka had already took over the family business, and was fascinated by its special and unique taste. He flew to Scotland to learn and taste all sorts of whisky from different distilleries.
Since then, he has persistently purchased and collected all sorts of single malt whisky from Scotland every year. Even Mr. Tanaka’s parents were very confused by their son who is so determined to run this business with no profit at all in the era of the Japanese public being unable to admire the beauty of single malt whisky.
Due to his persistence for so many years, Mr. Tanaka becomes an Asia, even a global pioneer, because of his long term friendship with many distilleries and partnership with many niche and prestigious clients all over the world, such as The Imperial Hotel Tokyo is the long term partner of the family. Due to this persistence with strong faith, there is a birth of Ór Síleis nowadays.