On the western coast of Kagoshima, overlooking the East China Sea, Kanosuke Distillery is producing whisky with a character shaped by its coastal home and a family history stretching back almost 140 years.

The story begins in 1883, when the Komasa family began making sacred sake for a local shrine in Kagoshima. The family later specialised in shōchū, and it was the second-generation master distiller, Kanosuke Komasa, who would change the direction of the business.

Kanosuke was determined to challenge the perception of shōchū as a simple, inexpensive spirit. He studied distillation and maturation techniques in Japan and overseas, and became convinced that, like whisky,shōchū could develop greater depth through time in oak.

In 1957, he released Mellowed Kozuru, Japan's first long-term cask-aged rice shōchū. The spirit spent six years in oak, an unconventional approach that met considerable resistance at the time. Kanosuke persisted, establishing a new approach to shōchū that would eventually become an important part of his grandson's whisky-making philosophy.

More than 60 years later, fourth-generation master distiller Yoshitsugu Komasa had initially focused on taking the family's shōchū overseas. While he found some success, he also saw the difficulty of introducing a spirit that was still relatively unknown outside Japan. Whisky, by contrast, was already understood and appreciated around the world. He began studying whisky production in different regions before deciding to build a distillery on land his grandfather had acquired near Fukiagehama Beach.

Kanosuke Distillery was established in 2017, carrying his grandfather's name and continuing the same ambition: to introduce Kagoshima's distilling culture to a global audience.

The connection between the two generations is direct, Kanosuke uses ex-shōchū casks to mature some of its whisky. Those casks have become a key part of the distillery's single malt, carrying an element of the family's history directly into the new spirit.

The distillery's location plays its own role. Kanosuke sits beside Fukiagehama Beach on Kagoshima's west coast, where the surrounding landscape and sea air form part of the maturation environment. Its warehouses are close enough to the coast for the maritime conditions to contribute subtle salty and savoury notes to the whisky.

Inside the distillery, Kanosuke takes an equally flexible approach. Three pot stills, each with a different shape and lyne arm angle, allow the distillers to create distinct styles of spirit. Long fermentation adds further layers of fruit and creaminess, while a range of casks and maturation environments gives the blender a broad palette to work with.

The result is a style that is recognisably Kanosuke: mellow, fruit-forward and gently sweet, with layers of oak, spice and coastal character.