Kanosuke's Other Two: Hioki Pot Still and the 2023 Cask Strength

We have written about Kanosuke before, and about Komasa Jyozo's Satsuma Gin. These two bottles sit between those stories.

Komasa Jyozo is a Kagoshima shochu house founded in 1883. Kanosuke Distillery is the whisky operation they opened in 2017, on the coast at Hioki. The gin, the shochu and the whisky all come out of the same company, and that overlap is the whole reason these two bottles taste the way they do.

Hioki Pot Still

Released on 1 December 2023, at 51% ABV.

The unusual part is where it is made. The new make is distilled at the Hioki Distillery, the shochu side of the business, in a single pot still, from barley and malt. It is then moved to Kanosuke Distillery's maturation cellar and aged there in new American white oak and bourbon barrels.

That split matters. A shochu still is built for a different job than a whisky still, and running a barley mash through one produces a spirit shaped by shochu engineering rather than Scottish convention. Then it gets Scottish-convention wood on top.

The distillery's own notes describe a deep amber color, a nose of butter sand, yuzu, apricot and ume compote, a palate of madeleine, oak, a pleasant saltiness, marmalade and unshu mandarin, and a finish of vanilla and dry ginger with a gentle lingering sweetness.

The saltiness in there is not imagination. Kanosuke's warehouse sits on the coast facing the East China Sea, and that maritime note runs through most of what they release.

A 2024 Limited Edition followed at 55%, adding spirit aged in recharged Japanese shochu barrels for a balance of slight bitterness against the sweetness.

The 2023 Cask Strength Limited Edition

This one is a different animal. 59% ABV, non-chill filtered.

The whisky was mainly distilled in 2018 and 2019, from 100% malted barley: a combination of malt peated to 50 ppm and unpeated malt. Fifty ppm is properly peaty, in Islay territory rather than the light smoke most Japanese distilleries use.

It is double distilled using a combination of Kanosuke's three Miyake copper pot stills, and matured for an average of four to five years across three cask types: ex-bourbon barrels, sherry casks, and ex-Mellowed Kozuru casks.

That last one is the house signature. Mellowed Kozuru is Komasa Jyozo's own rice shochu, aged in American oak. Kanosuke fills whisky into the emptied casks, which means the wood arrives carrying rice shochu rather than bourbon or sherry. Almost nobody else in the world has access to that barrel, because almost nobody else makes both.

The notes: cinnamon, pastry custard, banana and smoky incense on the nose, then black tea, salted caramel and baking spice on a weighty palate, finishing dry with salty-sweet smoke. It took a gold medal at the 2024 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

How to Drink Them

The Hioki Pot Still handles a large ice cube or a splash of water comfortably at 51%.

The Cask Strength at 59% genuinely wants water. Add it a few drops at a time. The peat and the shochu cask pull in opposite directions, and the point where they meet moves as you dilute, so it is worth finding rather than guessing.

Pair Them With

Grilled and smoky. Yakitori with tare, grilled fish, anything off the charcoal.

Try It at Juraku

Kanosuke bottles are on the whisky list at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side. The limited editions come and go, so check the current menu or ask the bar what is open.