Nankai Shochu: Kokuto From Amami, and Why Only There

Shochu comes in a lot of styles: sweet potato, barley, rice, buckwheat. Kokuto shochu is the one with a rule attached, and the rule is the interesting part.

Why It Can Only Be Made in One Place

Kokuto shochu is made from brown sugar, and by the ordinary logic of Japanese liquor law that should make it a spirit taxed like rum, not shochu.

The Amami Islands are the exception, and it comes from a specific problem with a specific date.

The islands were under US administration after the war and returned to Japan on 25 December 1953. Japanese liquor tax law came with them, and that law did not list sugar among the permitted ingredients for shochu. Brown sugar distillate was therefore heading for classification as a spirit, alongside rum, at roughly thirty percent more tax. For an industry that was the local economy, that was close to fatal.

The islands petitioned. Application of the tax law was deferred, the enforcement regulations were amended in 1954 to permit shochu made from brown sugar, and in 1959 the National Tax Agency set the terms that still hold: it may be made only in the Amami Islands, and only if rice koji is used.

So every bottle of kokuto shochu in the world comes from one small island chain between Kyushu and Okinawa. That is not a marketing region. It is a tax ruling that never got revisited.

How It Differs From Rum

Rum ferments sugar directly. Kokuto shochu ferments brown sugar alongside rice koji, which is the same mould used for sake and miso, and that changes the result completely.

Koji breaks things down gently and contributes its own aromatics, so the spirit ends up lighter and cleaner than sweet potato shochu, with vanilla, sugarcane and tropical fruit rather than the heavy molasses character you get from rum. There is sugar in the ferment but almost no sweetness left in the glass.

What We Pour

Nankai is made by Amami Oshima Kaiun Shuzo, on Amami Oshima. We carry three:

• Nankai, the standard bottling. Clean, bright, lightly sweet, smooth on the finish.
• Nankai White Oak, rested briefly in white oak, which adds vanilla, spice and toasted wood.
• Nankai Gold, the richest of the three. Blended from spirits distilled at roughly 80% brown sugar and 20% rice, aged up to five years in American white oak and French Limousin casks with part of it vacuum distilled. Raisin, chocolate and honey, at 43% ABV.

The Reforestation Part

Proceeds from Nankai go toward reforestation on the Amami Islands.

That is worth a sentence because the connection is not decorative. The subtropical forest is what makes the island water what it is, and the water is in the shochu. A distillery funding the watershed it distils from is closer to maintenance than to charity.

How to Drink It

Neat, if you want the aromatics. On the rocks is the common way, and the dilution brings out the fruit. As a highball with soda and citrus it is one of the easiest things to drink alongside food.

It goes with grilled things above all: yakitori, pork belly, seafood off the grill.

If you have never had shochu, this is a reasonable place to start. It is gentler than imo shochu and there is nothing to get used to.