Nagasaki and Iki長崎県・壱岐
Iki island, where barley shochu was invented.
5 bottles here · 3 producers · Mugi (barley)
Protected origin: Iki壱岐焼酎
Barley and rice koji, roughly two parts barley to one of rice, fermented with the island's own water, then distilled and bottled on Iki.
Designated 1995 by Japan’s National Tax Agency. Source.
Barley shochu was invented on Iki, a small island in the strait between Kyushu and Korea, some five hundred years ago. Farmers there paid rice as tax and were left with barley, and distilled what they had.
That history is why Iki shochu is legally two parts barley to one part rice koji rather than all barley: the rice koji is the older method, and the Oita style that dropped rice entirely came four centuries later. An Iki bottle tastes rounder and sweeter than an Oita one for that reason, and the difference is structural rather than stylistic.
Iki was designated in 1995 as one of the four original protected names, and it is one of the small handful of Japanese spirits recognised under the WTO TRIPS agreement.
Producers here
- Omoya Shuzo2 bottles
- Genkai Distilling Company1 bottle
- Yama no Mori Distilling Company1 bottle
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.