This micro distillery created by the Yoshiharu family was born thanks to the passion of its founder, Yoshiharu Takeuchi, for spirits and his desire to create a rum inspired by the distillation techniques of Single Malts.
The distillery is located in Shiga Prefecture near Kyoto, the former capital of Japan. More precisely, the distillery is located on the shores of Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan surrounded by mountains and forest. The choice of the location of the distillery was determined according to the quality of the water and not according to the proximity of the sugar cane fields. The purity of water is at the heart of Japanese philosophy. A production inspired by single Malts Yoshiharu Takeuchi, lover of single malt, decided to adopt a way of doing things close to that of single malts in order to create flavors that are both complex and delicate. Long before he built the distillery, he had consulted the famous Scottish stills manufacturer, Forsyths, to create the ideal stills for the rum he wanted to distill. He also learned the art of distillation at the Chichibu distillery, well known for its 'Ichiro's Malt'. There are two stills and two distillation processes for Nine Leavesdistillation. After the fermentation of muscovado (from the island of Okinawa called Kokutou or Kurosatou in Japan) and water, this ferment is first distilled in a rather stocky still, before undergoing a second distillation in a still higher, in order to refine the flavors so important to Nine Leaves. During this second distillation, Yoshiharu samples every 5 minutes, to ensure a quality that is always perfect. The resulting rum is now reduced to its degree of 50%, bottled and sealed. Each bottle is labeled and numbered by Yoshiharu, and sometimes even delivered by the master distiller himself!
