Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles
The most unexpected bottle on Bar Little Happiness’s rum shelf is probably the IE Lab expression made with sansho pepper and iyokan citrus.
IE Lab (イーラボ) is a rum operation based on Ie Island — a small island off the coast of Okinawa’s main island, accessible by ferry. The distillery makes rum from Okinawan sugarcane using a combination of traditional and experimental approaches, and the botanical expressions they produce are genuinely unlike anything else in the Japanese spirits landscape.
Sansho and Iyokan
Sansho (山椒) is the Japanese cousin of Sichuan pepper — a citrusy, numbing spice that is central to several Japanese regional cuisines and, increasingly, to cocktail and spirits experimentation. It has a brightness and an electric quality on the palate that makes it a challenging ingredient to use well.
Iyokan is a citrus fruit specific to the Ehime Prefecture region — somewhere between a mandarin and a grapefruit in character, with a sweet-acid balance that makes it popular in juice form and in the confectionery of Ehime’s coastal cities.
The combination of these two ingredients with rum — the caramel richness of cane sugar distillate — creates something that is simultaneously recognisable and completely surprising. The sansho electric note against the rum sweetness. The iyokan acid cutting through. It is a whisky-bar conversation starter in liquid form.
IE Lab rum expressions are available at Bar Little Happiness. Read the full Japanese column: little-happiness.jp/columns/ierum-okinawa-rum-karaki-jimami/
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