Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles
At a recent Shindo Distillery seminar in Fukuoka, the host paused in the middle of a tasting description and said something that I have been thinking about ever since: “There’s a yellow fruit in there.”
The remark was addressed to everyone, but it landed specifically with me. Not because of the fruit — I could identify the note myself — but because of how naturally the observation moved between generations of whisky experience in the room. The person speaking was drawing on decades of knowledge. The person listening was building toward their own. And the whisky in the glass was the same glass that connected them.
Shindo Distillery
Shinozaki Shindo Distillery is located in Asakura City, Fukuoka Prefecture — a name that whisky specialists in Japan recognise, but that is not widely known outside the specialist community. The distillery operates within the Shinozaki Company, a shochu and sake producer with a long regional history.
What makes Shindo interesting is the combination of traditional shochu-making knowledge — the same kind of technical foundation that makes Kanosuke’s character distinctive — with a serious approach to single malt production. The distillery is not trying to make Scottish whisky. It is trying to understand what the Fukuoka terroir and the Shinozaki craft tradition can produce when applied to whisky.
The seminar I attended was organised around tasting through several expressions while hearing about the distillery’s philosophy — the intergenerational transmission of craft that is central to how these older shochu-and-sake companies understand their whisky projects.
Shindo Distillery whisky is available at Bar Little Happiness. Read the full Japanese column: little-happiness.jp/columns/shinozaki-shindo-distillery-seminar/
Bar Little Happiness | Hiroshima, Japan
Rum & Whisky specialists | 1,000+ bottles | English menu available
Open Mon–Sat 7PM–12:30AM, Sun 7PM–midnight
No cover charge. Walk-ins welcome.
english.little-happiness.jp