Prologue｜The Outline of a Category

The definition of gin is surprisingly simple. A distilled spirit given the aroma of botanicals, with juniper at the centre. There is no restriction on the grain it comes from, no designated region, no requirement to age.

Where whisky and brandy are defined strictly by what they are made from, gin is defined by a single point: juniper.

That freedom leaves the maker two choices. One is the distilled spirit that forms the base. The other is the botanicals layered onto it. Japanese distilleries have taken up gin in number over the past few years. The two answers each of them gives are inseparable from the history of the house.

I｜Putting Your Own Sake Into Gin

Kotohira, Kagawa Prefecture. At the approach to Kotohira-gu shrine stands a brewery that has been making sake since 1789. Nishino Kinryo — the house entrusted with the shrine’s ceremonial sake.

The base of this brewery’s Yunagi GIN is honkaku shochu, made from Sanuki sake rice. While most Japanese distilleries do not disclose what their base spirit is made from, this house states plainly that it is rice. It is a decision to build directly on more than two centuries of working with the grain.

The land enters through the plants as well. Six of the ten botanicals come from the Seto Inland Sea region and Shikoku, and one of them is olive grown on the Inland Sea coast. Kagawa is where olive cultivation first succeeded in Japan, in 1908.

Umenoyado Brewery, in Katsuragi, Nara Prefecture, answered the same question in a different form. UMENOYADO GIN, released in July 2024 by this house founded in 1893, is officially composed of six elements. Yuzu, lemon, apple, juniper berry, coriander seed, and sake. Among the botanicals stands the brewery’s own sake.

One as the base itself, the other as a single botanical element. Both houses carried the sake they had brewed into the gin.

II｜Expressing a Place Through Plants

Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima Prefecture. Sakurao Brewery and Distillery, founded in 1918, completed its distillery in 2017 and brought it into full operation from 2018.

SAKURAO GIN ORIGINAL is built on fourteen botanicals, nine of them from Hiroshima Prefecture. What stands out is the weight given to citrus: five of those nine are citrus fruits. It is a design that gathers what the islands of the Seto Inland Sea grow into a single bottle.

In 2018 this gin took Best of Gin at the Los Angeles International Spirits Competition. That same year it received Gold Outstanding at the International Wine & Spirit Competition.

Not the base, but the plants layered on top — the place is spoken through them. That, too, is an answer.

III｜And Then, Letting the Base Go

Niseko, Abuta District, Hokkaido. In December 2020, a distillery was completed in a region that receives more than fifteen metres of snow a year. Niseko Distillery. Its parent company is Hakkaisan Brewery, which has been making sake in Niigata since 1922.

A house that has brewed sake for a century now making gin in Hokkaido — the base you would expect is rice. Sake would do; kasutori shochu would do. It is the road the two breweries of the previous chapters took.

Niseko Distillery did not take it.

The base of NISEKO ohoro GIN STANDARD, released in October 2021, is neutral spirit. Not a rice-derived spirit, not the brewery’s own sake. That house deliberately left its greatest asset out of the foundation.

The reason lies in where they were aiming. Juniper berry, coriander, angelica root — the botanicals that form the skeleton of London Dry gin are set at the centre, and Hokkaido is added to them. Of the thirteen botanicals in total, only two come from Niseko: sweet gale (Myrica gale), which grows wild in the wetlands, and Japanese mint.

The water is groundwater from Mount Niseko-Annupuri — very soft water filtered through volcanic ash soil, with a hardness of about 33. Distillation uses a hybrid still made by Arnold Holstein of Germany, working between maceration and vapour infusion. The strength is 47%.

The name ohoro means “to continue” in the Ainu language.

Epilogue｜The Aesthetics of Subtraction

In 2024, this gin was named World’s Best Classic Gin at the World Gin Awards. In the same year it received the Trophy in the gin category at the International Spirits Challenge (per the organiser’s announcement), and a Double Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

That the recognition came in the classic category matters. It was not a contest of Japaneseness, but an assessment made on the standard London Dry gin had spent centuries building.

Two of thirteen botanicals are local. The meaning of a distillery in deep snow country choosing not to add Hokkaido lies here. Rather than bringing the character of the place to the front, the skeleton comes first. Not adding, but taking away.

When Japanese breweries turn to gin, there is more than one answer. One house set rice as the base. One gathered the plants of its region. And one deliberately let go of its strongest asset.

What you choose as the base — the thinking of the house appears in that single point.