Kanosuke

Kanosuke belongs to Komasa Jyozo, a shochu maker from Kagoshima in southern Kyushu. The distillery opened in 2017 on Fukiagehama, a 47 kilometre beach of sand dunes, which makes it the only beachfront whisky distillery in Japan.

It is named after Kanosuke Komasa, the founder's grandfather, who created Mellowed Kozuru, the first shochu in Japan to be aged in oak casks. Those same casks are now part of how Kanosuke whisky tastes.

The single malts are Kanosuke's own spirit. The Double Distillery blended malt combines Kanosuke malt with whisky from the company's second site, the Hioki distillery. Komasa Jyozo does not publish bottle by bottle whether each one meets the Japanese whisky labelling standard.

Komasa Jyozo was founded in 1883, making sake for nearby shrines, and moved into shochu. Yoshitsugu Komasa, the fourth generation to run it, started building the whisky distillery in March 2017. Distilling began on 13 November 2017, and the distillery opened to visitors in spring 2018.

The first single malt, the 2021 First Edition, came out in June 2021, and a permanent core single malt followed in January 2023. The Hioki distillery, ten minutes away, was licensed for grain whisky in 2020.

Kanosuke has three copper pot stills, each with a different neck shape and lyne arm angle, so it can make several styles of spirit and layer them in blending. Much of it is filled into recharred casks that previously held Mellowed Kozuru shochu, which the company credits for the mellow core running through the range.

The climate is warm and the warehouses catch the sea breeze off the dunes, so whisky matures quickly. At Hioki the grain whisky is made on stainless steel shochu stills using vacuum distillation, from a mash of 90 per cent unmalted naked barley and 10 per cent malted barley.