Unkai Soba Shochu: The Distillery That Invented the Category

Most shochu styles are old enough that nobody knows who started them. Soba shochu is not. It has a date and an address.

1973, Gokase, Miyazaki

Unkai Shuzo made the first buckwheat shochu in the world in 1973 and released it under the name Unkai. Everything else in the category came after, which is a strange thing to be able to say about a Japanese spirit.

The reason it took until 1973 is that buckwheat fights back. Koji is a mould, and to do its job it has to get into the grain and break the starch down. A buckwheat kernel has a hard, sealed surface that the mould struggles to penetrate, so for most of shochu's history buckwheat was simply not a practical thing to ferment. Working out how to make soba koji at all was the invention. The spirit was the result of it.

What Is Actually in the Bottle

Here is the part that usually gets stated wrong, including in our own older write-up of it, which said buckwheat and left it there.

Soba Unkai is not 100% buckwheat. The bottle is built from buckwheat, barley and rice, and it uses three separate koji: barley koji, rice koji and buckwheat koji. The buckwheat leads, and the barley and rice sit underneath giving it body and a softer landing.

That is a deliberate choice rather than a compromise. If you want to taste what undiluted buckwheat does, we also pour Towari, which is 100% soba and is a noticeably more austere drink. Side by side they make the point better than either does alone.

The Yeast

Unkai also ferments with a yeast they isolated themselves, from the flowers of the buckwheat they grow on their own farm in Miyazaki. It is called their soba flower aroma yeast, and it is where the fruitiness comes from.

This is worth knowing because people taste soba shochu, find it sweet and floral, and assume the buckwheat is doing that. Buckwheat is not a sweet or floral ingredient. The yeast is doing it. Same lesson as koji colour: on a shochu label the ingredient is often the least informative thing on it.

What It Tastes Like

Light, soft, faintly nutty, with a clean dry finish and no burn on the way down. Nothing in it demands attention.

That is the appeal and it is also why it is easy to underrate. This is a spirit built to sit alongside a long meal without ever being the thing you are thinking about.

How to Drink It

On the rocks, or as a highball with soda, or cut with cold water. All three work and none of them are wrong.

It goes with yakitori, agedashi tofu, garlic edamame, crispy rice. It supports food rather than competing with it, which is most of the reason we keep it on.

If you have never had shochu and whisky feels like too much, start here.