I wasn’t in crazy-busy Tokyo. I wasn’t in Kyoto, with its calming temples and shrines. Rather, I was in Kyushu, an island located in southern Japan. Though I might have been here for the surfing or the plentiful onsen (hot springs), I arrived in search of shochu, one of Japan’s native distillates.
Nearly all honkaku (authentic) shochu is made in Kyushu, home to more than 280 distilleries. Indeed, the highway that winds from one often-remote distillery to another is nicknamed “the shochu highway.”
This expressive spirit, which can be made from more than 50 base ingredients such as rice, barley, buckwheat, sweet potato—and more unusual ingredients like bell peppers, seaweed or pumpkin— outsells sake in its home country. Most Americans, however, are only just starting to discover it.
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What Is Shochu?
A traditional Japanese distillate with roots that can be traced back to the 1500s, shochu (pronounced show-chew) can be made from more than 50 different agricultural products and is fermented using koji (a type of mold also used to make miso and soy sauce), then distilled. Many are bottled at relatively lower alcohol levels, around 25–30% abv, compared to 40% or higher for vodka and other spirits.
The result is a particularly expressive liquid that reflects the underlying ingredient and often has a faint touch of umami, thanks to the koji fermentation. Shochu made from black sugar (kokuto) from the Amami Islands
This Article was originally published on Wine Enthusiast
