Kuromatsunai, Hokkaido: a craft gin scented with beech forest
The town of Kuromatsunai in Hokkaido has launched a craft gin flavoured with beech and Sakhalin fir leaves gathered locally, on a base of its speciality glutinous-rice shochu.
Kuromatsunai (Kuromatsunai-cho), a small town in south-western Hokkaido, has begun selling a new craft gin, Kuromatsunai Deep Green Gin. It uses forest leaves for its aroma and is built on shochu, one of the town’s speciality products. The project aims to make the most of both the town’s natural surroundings and a local spirit whose sales had been declining.
Turning the northernmost beech forest into aroma
Kuromatsunai is known for its “northernmost beech forest”, the northern limit of the range in which Japanese beech (Fagus crenata) grows naturally. For this gin, leaves of beech, Sakhalin fir (todomatsu) and other trees gathered within the town are used as botanicals. Todomatsu is a conifer common in Hokkaido and a relative of the firs. By bottling the scent of the local forest, the makers aim for a gin that could only come from this place. The name “Deep Green” also appears to refer to the town’s richly green landscape.
Giving shochu a new role
The base is a glutinous-rice shochu that the town has long produced. Shochu is a Japanese distilled spirit made from rice, barley, sweet potato and other ingredients. Glutinous rice is a very sticky rice used for mochi and Japanese confectionery. Sales of this shochu have fallen in recent years, so the town hopes that turning it into gin will create a new local speciality. It plans to widen the range and to use the gin among other things as a return gift under Japan’s “furusato nozei” scheme, in which donations to a local authority are rewarded with regional products.
How European readers can enjoy it
Craft gins that make use of local plants are on the rise in Hokkaido, from a gin made by distilling sake on Rishiri Island and flavoured with kelp and pine, to a Tokachi gin that won high praise at an international competition. The Kuromatsunai gin is for now aimed at the domestic market, and no overseas sales have been announced. When looking for Japanese gin in Europe, check the label to see whether the base spirit is shochu or sake. A gin built on a rice spirit can show a soft, grain-derived gentleness. Try a small amount neat, or lightly diluted with soda, to appreciate the aroma; this makes the difference between the forest-leaf notes and the base spirit easier to detect. Comparing it with European gins made with Alpine fir or spruce is another enjoyable way to explore it.
参考・出典
Hokkaido Shimbun Digital, “Kuromatsunai town launches craft gin with beech forest aroma, based on speciality glutinous-rice shochu”
Sources
This article was written by The Sake Wire editorial team, summarising the public sources listed above. Images are our own.
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