Garappa #01: A Gin Made With Shochu Technique, Not Gin Technique

There are two ways a Japanese distillery ends up making gin.

One is to buy neutral spirit and follow the London dry playbook. The other is to make gin the way you already make everything else. Yamamoto Shuzo took the second road.

The Base

Honkaku shochu — authentic, single-distilled shochu, not neutral grain spirit.

Honkaku is a legal category in Japan. It means single distillation, no added flavorings, and a defined list of permitted raw materials. It's the opposite of a blank base: it keeps the character of what it was made from.

Starting there means the gin has a floor underneath the botanicals from the first sip.

Distilled Separately

The more unusual decision is what happens next.

Garappa uses five botanicals, each distilled individually, then blended, rather than the standard approach of throwing everything into one still together.

This costs more and takes longer. What it buys is control. In a single combined distillation, the run time and temperature are a compromise across every botanical in the pot: something delicate gets overcooked while something woody is still giving. Distilling separately means each one is treated on its own terms and the blending happens afterward, with the components already finished.

Yamamoto did that using the distillation technique they'd developed for shochu, which is the actual point of the bottle. This isn't a shochu house imitating a gin house.

It took a Spirit Gold at the International Wine & Spirits Competition.

How to Drink It

Because the base has character, this is a gin that stands up to being drunk simply. On the rocks works. So does a gin soda, where there's nothing much to interfere.

A gin and tonic is fine, but use a restrained tonic, the shochu base is part of what you're paying for and heavy quinine flattens it.

Pair It With

Treat it a bit like a shochu, since underneath it is one. It goes with grilled and savory food better than most gins do: yakitori, kuro buta sausage skewers, miso bacon, pork kakuni.

Try It at Juraku

Garappa is on the gin list at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side. If you drink shochu here and have never ordered a gin, this is the crossing point.