We love sake (nihonshu) - adore it, but here's the thing - Shochu is more popular in Japan than sake, and, in fact, it also outsells every other spirit there, and it's been that way for a while. Yet most people outside of Japan - and certainly most Australians - haven't ever really encountered it properly. What makes things even more confusing is that Shochu sounds like the Korean Soju, which most people are familiar with in the green bottles (ugh), leading to all kinds of confusion about what it actually us.
Shochu itself is really quite straightforward in concept, yet endlessly complex in practice and in crafting. You take a base ingredient — rice, barley, sweet potato, buckwheat, even things like chestnuts or sesame (there is a vast list of ingrediants approved for use in Japan, hat we'll cover in articles at a later time) - you then inoculate rice, barley or even sweet potato it with Koji mould, add it to the base ingredient, ferment it, and distil it once. That single distillation is the absolute key. Where vodka, gin and even whiskey gets distilled multiple times to achieve neutrality, "Honkaku Shochu" — authentic shochu — keeps everything the first pass has to offer. The character of the ingredient, the depth of the Koji fermentation, the character of the water. Nothing gets stripped out. For those in the know, were talking Heads, Hearts and Tails.
It is primarily (but not exclusively) then diluted down to 25% abv, and because of that single distilled entire run combination, some crazy and magical things happen - it tastes full flavoured, not watered down like what would happen if you did the same thing as to a whiskey, and, it rounds out - the heads, hearts and tails of the distillation merge into a singular beast of delicious proportions.
At Tano we work primarily with Australian grain and produce for our shochu. We use koshihikari rice, QLD sweet potato varieties, Victorian pearl barley and even Australians very first jaggery sugar as a stand-in for Japanese kokuto. Our choice isn't just practical — it's where the flavour comes from. Japanese rice shochu made from Japanese rice tastes a particular way. Within Japan, there are a large number of fantastic shochus made, for example with Australian barley - for good reason, it just tastes damn great, and our local produce is an honest expression of where and how our drinks are made.
We also make Awamori, which is Okinawan rather than mainland Japanese, and is a different proposition entirely. Although Awamori is often included in the Shochu category (like we've done here, for simplicity), its actually a category all unto itself. Awamori is always made using Thai long-grain indica rice (ie jasmine rice), always black Koji, and traditionally aged in clay pots called kame. It's all earth, umami, tropical notes and complex, with a depth that builds with time. It is one of, if not the only, spirits that continues to age in the bottle jsut like wine. If shochu is Japan's everyday spirit, Awamori is its philosopher - slower, quieter, and worth having a deep conversation with. But heres the kicker - Australia has its very own, absolutely delicious, variety of Thai indica rice - Topaz, and this is what we use, and as far as we know, we're the only people in the world that uses it for awamori.
The other thing worth knowing about shochu, is that it is extremely versatile in how it is imbibed. If you're coming from a wine background, its can actually often be enjoyed like wine than a traditional Western spirit. The classic serve is "mizuwari" - shochu with cold water at about three parts water to seven parts spirit, and it works over a whole meal without overwhelming the food. It's genuinely lower in calories than most spirits, genuinely lower in alcohol than most Western options, and genuinely interesting across the whole glass rather than just the first sip. Flip that on its head, and it turns into a genuine spirit, throw it into a cocktail or have it as a "Chuhai" - shochu, soda and maybe a spritz of citrus. Finally, you have our favourite - oyuwari, hot water and shochu - an experience that you have to have, rather than us just tell you about.
As you can see, Shochu is a huge topic - and we're looking forward to diving into it even more in our Articles - but we hope that this has piqued your interest.