Kagoshima鹿児島県

Kagoshima is where imo shochu is from, and the reason is soil. The southern tip of Kyushu is covered in shirasu, a deep volcanic ash deposit that drains too fast and holds too little to be good rice country. Sweet potatoes do not mind. A crop that grows where rice fails, in a domain that still had to pay its taxes, is most of the explanation for why a whole prefecture distils potatoes.

The variety that matters is Kogane Sengan, and it turns up on nearly every Kagoshima label in this catalogue. It is a starchy, pale-fleshed potato bred for processing rather than for eating, and it is the reason so many of these bottles share a family resemblance underneath whatever the koji and the still are doing.

The prefecture is also where the modern category was rebuilt twice. Tomino Hozan, from Nishi Shuzo, put yellow koji and low-temperature fermentation into a spirit that had always been made with white, and made something citric and light enough to overturn the assumption that imo shochu had to smell of the field. Kuro Isanishiki, from Okuchi Shuzo, did the same in the other direction, reviving black koji in 1987 and setting off the kuro boom that is why so many labels in this catalogue now have a black version.

Note that Amami, though administratively part of Kagoshima, is not covered by the Satsuma GI and does not make imo shochu. It has its own page here, and its own legal category.