Chugoku Jozo

Founded exactly one century ago, in 1918, the Chugoku Jozo distillery has always been dedicated to the production of sake, the national drink par excellence of Japan, of shochu, a distillate that can be produced with various ingredients typical of the production region (potatoes, chestnuts, rice) and mirin, a classic ingredient of Japanese and Asian cuisine in general: it is a sweet sake characterized by a lower alcohol content than its traditional version. The Chugoku Jozo distillery has always tried to create unique products and stand out from competing companies: the company motto is knowing how to distill sake that cannot be distilled by anyone else. At the end of the 1960s, Hakosake Ichidai was put on the market, the first alcoholic drink in the world sold in entirely paper packaging. This simple marketing move gave the company great visibility in Japan, but also in the Western world. For the first time, the class and elegance of the Land of the Rising Sun become a mass consumer good. The Misen sake line achieved major recognition in 2013, winning first prize at the Annual Japan Sake Awards. Over the last thirty years, the Chugoku Jozo distillery, in its factories in Hiroshima, has also begun to dedicate itself to the production of whisky. In this case the raw materials are not local, as in the case of sake, but it is a mixture of Scottish malts and Canadian grains. The result was Togouchi, a Japanese Blended Whiskey aged in oak barrels for 8 years in an evocative cellar created inside what was a railway tunnel; constant temperature and humidity are perfect characteristics for the success of the process. The products of the Chugoku Jozo distillery best represent the attention and care for details typical of Japanese culture.