Oita大分県
The barley shochu kingdom. Light, dry, and made at scale.
18 bottles here · 4 producers · Mugi (barley)
Oita is barley country, and it is a relatively recent invention. Nikaido and Sanwa Shurui built the modern mugi style here in the 1970s and 80s: barley and barley koji only, no rice, distilled under reduced pressure so the heavy notes never form. The result is light, faintly fruity and very easy, and it is the style that took shochu national in Japan.
Two firsts in this catalogue belong to Nikaido and both matter. It made the first vacuum-distilled barley shochu, and it is credited with inventing 100 percent barley koji shochu, meaning the koji is grown on barley rather than on rice. Before that a barley shochu still had rice in it.
Sanwa Shurui, which makes Iichiko, is the largest barley shochu producer in Japan. The style's critics call it neutral; its defenders point out that being clean enough to drink all evening with food was the entire design goal.
Producers here
- Yatsushika Shuzo8 bottles
- Nikaido Shuzo2 bottles · Official site
- Sanwa Shurui2 bottles
- Yatsushika Sake Brewery Co.1 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.
