Okinawa沖縄県

Awamori is the oldest distilled spirit in Japan, made in Okinawa since roughly the fifteenth century, when distilling arrived from Siam through the Ryukyu kingdom's trade rather than from mainland Japan. It predates shochu, and mainland shochu most likely descends from it.

Three things make it a different drink rather than a regional shochu. It uses long-grain Thai indica rice, not Japanese rice. It uses black koji, always. And it is made by the all-koji method, zen koji shikomi, where the entire mash is koji rather than koji plus a separate main mash added later. That last one is the big one: it is a single-stage fermentation where shochu is two-stage, and it is why awamori is denser and more savoury.

Awamori aged three years or more is called kusu, and traditionally it was aged by shitsugi, topping up older clay pots from younger ones in a chain, which is the same idea as a sherry solera. Some Okinawan distilleries have gone back to making the pots themselves.