REGION: Miyazaki

One of Japan’s most iconoclastic distillers, Junpei Kanemaru was born into a shochu family that sold their distillery when he was a boy. In his early 20s Kanemaru found a defunct distillery filled with 19th century equipment and restarted the family tradition of shochu making. Instead of depth and funk his sweet potato shochu is delicate and rewards the patient drinker with subtle tropical notes.

Kuroki Hoten has been distilling fine shochu since 1885. They take great pride in growing all the ingredients themselves on their own organic farm and turning the byproducts of distillation into fertilizer to reduce waste and create a renewable cycle.

Owned and run by the Kuroki family of legendary Kuroki Honten Distillery, the Osuzuyama Distillery was started in 1998 to specialize in traditional craft shochu and distinctive, shochu-based gin, using only the finest ingredients grown by the family on their own farms.