We’ve been diving deep into Japanese wine lately, but during a recent tasting we were introduced to something completely different: shōchū.
For those who don’t know it, shōchū is a traditional Japanese distilled spirit. It can be made from barley, rice, buckwheat, brown sugar… but the most famous style, especially in Kagoshima, made from sweet potatoes.
The distillery we tasted was Tenguzakura, and what fascinated us wasn’t just the spirit itself, but their philosophy.
Instead of treating sweet potatoes as a single ingredient, they separate them by variety and even by parcel. Sound familiar?
As wine lovers, we couldn’t help but think of Burgundy. Just like a winemaker vinifies grapes from different climats separately, Tenguzakura produces shōchū from sweet potatoes grown in specific fields.
The bottles we tasted were:
– #32 – Sweet potato variety Nanka (南果) from the Nakahara parcel (2025 harvest).
– #33 – A field blend (“Konshoku”), where different sweet potato varieties are grown together in the same parcel, also from Nakahara (2025 harvest).
– #34 – Their classic Honkaku Shōchū, showcasing the distillery’s traditional style.
It was very interesting to see terroir applying to distilled spirits in this way. It was a refreshing reminder that even after distillation, the choice of variety and the place where it’s grown can still be part of the story.
Have you ever tried shochu before ? Any interesting distillery ?
by 3-grapes-tokyo
1 Comment
You know i respect a distillery that treats sweet potatoes like vineyard parcels. most spirit producers would just dump everything in the same vat and call it a day
their field blend concept is what got me though. growing different varieties together in the same plot then distilling them as one, that’s some co-ferment energy right there. curious how the #32 and #33 compared side by side