Miyazaki宮崎県
The broadest range in Japan: sweet potato, barley, rice and buckwheat.
84 bottles here · 20 producers · Imo (sweet potato), Mugi (barley), Kome (rice), Soba (buckwheat)
Miyazaki makes more different kinds of shochu than any other prefecture. Sweet potato in the south where it borders Kagoshima, barley in the north, rice, and buckwheat in the mountains around Takachiho, where soba shochu was invented in the 1970s.
It is also where a particular idea of craft distilling took hold. Kuroki Honten grows its own barley and sweet potatoes, and makes its koji by hand. Their Osuzuyama distillery opened in 1998, up on Mount Osuzu for the water and the air, and was built to do that at a smaller scale. Watanabe, Yanagita and Furusawa work the same way. Several of the bottles here ferment with native yeast rather than a pitched strain. That's rare anywhere in Japanese distilling.
Hyakunen no Kodoku, from Kuroki Honten, is the bottle that changed what shochu could charge. A barrel-aged barley shochu at 40 percent, released into a market that expected 25 percent and a plastic bottle. It named itself after the Garcia Marquez novel, and proved there was an audience for shochu sold like whisky.
Producers here
- Takachiho Shuzo15 bottles · Official site
- Takara Shuzo9 bottles · Official site
- Akashi Shuzo8 bottles · Official site
- Miyata Honten8 bottles · Official site
- Kirishima Shuzo6 bottles · Official site
- Watanabe Shuzojo6 bottles · Official site
- Kuroki Honten4 bottles · Official site
- Suki Shuzo4 bottles · Official site
- Yanagita Shuzo4 bottles · Official site
- Furusawa Jozo3 bottles · Official site
- Kodama Jozo3 bottles · Official site
- Kyoya Shuzo3 bottles · Official site
- Yamaya Joryujo3 bottles · Official site
- Kagura Shuzo2 bottles · Official site
- Ochiai Shuzojo2 bottles · Official site
- Osuzuyama Distillery2 bottles · Official site
- Shoro Shuzo2 bottles · Official site
- Inoue Shuzo1 bottle · Official site
- Sakurano Sato Shuzo1 bottle · Official site
- Unkai Shuzo1 bottle · Official site
A producer is linked only where a page on their own domain was read while researching one of their bottles. The rest have no link rather than a guessed one.
Others who distil here
The Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association lists these as distilling here. We hold no bottle from any of them, so there is nothing to recommend and no tasting note to give. What follows is a record that they exist, with their own site where the association publishes one.
- Akugare Joryujo2004 · Official site
Brands: Hinata Akugare (Imo)
- Fujimoto Honten
Brands: Fuji no Tsuyu (Imo)
- Himeizumi Shuzo1831 · Official site
Brands: Nanadaime Himeno (Mugi)
- Ikoma Kogen Shuzo1998
Brands: Makiba no Sakura (Imo)
- Iwakura Shuzo1890
Brands: Tsuki no Naka (Imo)
- Jukai Shuzo1985 · Official site
Brands: Himuka Kotobuki (Imo)
- Kawagoe Shuzojo
Brands: Kawagoe (Imo)
- Kawasaki Jozojo1895
Brands: Sono no Tsuyu (Kome)
- Kozo Shuzo1919 · Official site
Brands: Kozo (Imo)
- Matsu no Tsuyu Shuzo
Brands: Matsu no Tsuyu (Imo)
- Osuzuyama Joryujo1996
Brands: Osuzuyama Yamaneko (Imo)
- Oura Shuzo1909
Brands: Miyakozakura (Imo)
- Sakagura Outemon1895 · Official site
Brands: Kenjo Ginteki
- Sakuranomine Shuzo1877 · Official site
Brands: Kurokoji Heizo (Imo)
- Sato Shochu Seizojo1905 · Official site
Brands: Gin no Mizu (Mugi)
- Shochu Nichinan Kyodokumiai1984
Brands: Hinanomichi (Imo)
