The Tokyo Islands東京島酒
Tokyo distils too, out on the Izu islands, with barley koji and a protected name of its own since 2024.
4 bottles here · 3 producers · Imo (sweet potato), Mugi (barley)
Protected origin: Tokyo Shimazake東京島酒
The koji must be barley, and the mash is barley or sweet potato or a blend of the two. Sweet potato, where it is used, must be grown in Japan. The water must be drawn on the Izu islands, and the fermenting, distilling, ageing and bottling all happen there.
Designated March 2024 by Japan’s National Tax Agency. Source.
The Izu islands are administratively Tokyo, and they have been distilling shochu since a distiller was exiled to Hachijojima in the nineteenth century. The style puts barley koji on a sweet potato mash, or blends the two. Nobody on the mainland does it that way.
In March 2024 the National Tax Agency designated Tokyo Shimazake as a geographical indication. It is the fifth shochu or awamori GI and the first new one in eighteen years, after Iki, Kuma and Ryukyu in 1995 and Satsuma in 2005.
Four Izu island bottles are in this catalogue, listed below. We have not confirmed for any of them whether the label carries the GI mark, so none is described here as Tokyo Shimazake. The region has a page either way, because a map of Japanese shochu that omits the newest protected name would be out of date on the day it shipped.
Producers here
- Hachijo Kohatsu2 bottles · Official site
- Hachijojima Shuzo1 bottle · Official site
- Miyahara1 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.
- Aogashima Shuzo1984
Brands: Aochu (Ikenosawa) (Imo)
- Kashitate Shuzo1925 · Official site
Brands: Shimano Hana (Mugi)
- Miyakejima Shuzo1929
Brands: Oyamaichi (Mugi)
- Sakashita Shuzo1925 · Official site
Brands: Kuroshio (Other)
- Taniguchi Shuzo1937 · Official site
Brands: Gojinka Standard (Mugi)