Japan Whisky Press

Kuju distillery: whisky on the Oita highlands

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Kuju Distillery (久住蒸溜所) is a small single malt producer in Kuju (久住), a highland town in Taketa (竹田), Oita Prefecture, about 600 meters above sea level on the edge of Aso-Kuju National Park. It began distilling in February 2021, has no official export program, and has released a handful of single malts, all in small numbers. In this guide we cover who built it and why, how the equipment and climate shape the spirit, what each bottling is meant to do, and how a reader outside Japan can realistically get hold of one.

Most English coverage stops at an award headline and the Forsyths stills. The distillery’s Japanese pages tell a better story: a liquor shop owner who could not sell whisky in the late 1990s, a sake brewery left empty for three decades, and stills assembled by local engineers when the pandemic kept the Scottish crew at home.

Why a liquor shop owner built a distillery

A single malt in a student bar

The founder, Shoji Utoda (宇戸田祥自), heads Tsuzaki Shoji (津崎商事), a family business in Kuju that Japan Airlines describes as running a soy sauce brewery and liquor retail since the Taisho era. In the distillery’s brand story, Utoda says he never handled alcohol well, yet whisky was the exception. A friend took him to a bar while he was at university, and a glass of Scotch single malt hooked him.

He went back to the family liquor shop and started stocking whisky around 1998. The timing was poor. The distillery’s story calls this whisky’s “winter era” in Japan, and sales went nowhere for years. Utoda kept buying bottles he believed in and let the inventory grow, betting that the category would come back. Over time, conversations with customers and fellow enthusiasts turned into a plan to make whisky himself. Its mission statement on the homepage is built around giving back, promising “romance and fulfillment” to the people who make the whisky, “bliss” to those who drink it, and “pride and joy” to supporters.

A debt to a closed sake brewery

In March 2018 the company bought the former site of Kobayakawa Shuzo (小早川酒造), a sake brewery that had operated until 1989. According to the brand story, Utoda’s family had done business with the brewery for generations, and the Taisho-era main house was built with generous amounts of zelkova timber. The property had changed hands and fallen into disrepair. Some buildings were damaged in the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, but one storehouse came through intact, and the site had its own spring water.

Utoda frames the project as repayment. He cites the idea that in Scotland, townspeople welcome a new distillery because it means their town will be all right, and he says he wants the distillery to give the same lift to the small town where he grew up. Brewing had stopped on this site once. Restarting it with whisky is, in his words, a way of returning a favor.

Training, stills, and a pandemic setup

Lessons from Chichibu and Tsunuki

Passion does not get you a manufacturing license in Japan. The tax authority wants evidence of technical competence, so Utoda began training at Chichibu (秩父) in May 2017. He writes that he had never been so excited as when he was making whisky with his own hands there. The production manager, Takeishi (武石), later trained at Tsunuki (津貫), the Kagoshima distillery run by Hombo Shuzo. You can read more about both teachers in our Chichibu distillery guide and our Tsunuki distillery guide. Kuju calls training at both distilleries a major asset.

Hirano Shoten and the Forsyths drawings

Kuju signed with Forsyths in Scotland for equipment and installation in March 2019. The kit arrived in May 2020, just as COVID-19 closed borders, and the Forsyths engineers could not travel. Utoda turned to Hirano Shoten (平野商店), a firm that maintains equipment for large shochu and sake makers in the region. Working from drawings supplied by Forsyths, its engineers drove two and a half hours each way, every day, for about half a year. Setup ran from September to December 2020, the license came in January 2021, and the first distillation took place on February 27, 2021.

How Kuju makes its spirit

Stills and water

The distillery publishes more production detail than most of its peers. Its two Forsyths pot stills are both straight-necked, heated indirectly with steam, with a 2,500-liter wash still and an 1,800-liter spirit still. Kuju says the relatively small spirit still produces a heavier spirit. Condensing uses shell-and-tube condensers cooled with groundwater, and because the water table is high and supply is ample, the team says it can hit its target cooling all year. On the About Kuju page, the company calls having enough high-quality water “nothing short of a miracle.”

Wooden washbacks and a four-day ferment

Each mash uses 500 kg of malt. Most of it is imported, and about 10% is barley grown under contract by farmers in Oita. In August 2022 Kuju replaced all its fermenters with five Douglas fir washbacks, specifically to encourage stable lactic acid fermentation, with the stated goal of a more complex, flavorful whisky. Fermentation runs four days. A long ferment in wood trades throughput for flavor development.

Casks and four warehouses

Kuju fills mainly ex-bourbon barrels, and gives a clear reason: bourbon casks make it easier for drinkers to sense the character of the spirit itself. It also uses sherry, wine, rum, Armagnac, and Calvados casks. Because the town sits high enough to be cool by Kyushu standards, the distillery says maturation is proceeding relatively slowly. That is a deliberate contrast with warmer, lower-lying sites in southern Kyushu such as Kanosuke. For background on what each cask type contributes, see our guide to Japanese whisky cask types.

Warehouse No. 1 is the old brewery cellar, run as a traditional dunnage store. No. 2, a racked warehouse, opened in September 2022. No. 3, also dunnage, opened in December 2024, and a local gymnasium a short distance away serves as extra dunnage storage. Warehouse No. 3, a timber building split into four blocks to meet fire rules and set with a roof pitch matching the neighboring trees, won a prize in Oita Prefecture’s 2025 timber architecture award.

The land: grassland, burning, and altitude

A landscape kept open by people

Kuju Kogen (久住高原) is a broad grassland on the slopes of the Kuju mountains, often called “the roof of Kyushu.” The distillery points out that the grassland has been kept open for centuries by grazing and controlled burning. Japan’s Ministry of the Environment includes the scent of these burns on its list of 100 notable “fragrance landscapes.” Kuju uses that history in its branding. The name Green Dram, for example, is meant to honor the people who have maintained the grassland “for more than 1,000 years.”

What altitude actually changes

Scenery is not a production decision, but two features of the site are. Altitude keeps temperatures lower, so casks mature more slowly than at sea level in Kyushu. Plentiful groundwater lets the team run its condensers predictably through summer. That explains why a young distillery in southern Japan talks about patience rather than speed.

The bottlings and what each one is for

Michi, tabi, sora

Kuju names its single malt series as if each were a step on a mountain route. Michi (道, path) aims to capture “the Kuju style that can be expressed in that year,” using mainly non-peated bourbon and refill casks. The distillery says three words have begun to define its house character: complex, powerful, and fruity. Tabi (旅, journey) is a separate series that uses a share of bold, idiosyncratic component whiskies to widen the range. The tabi page carries one of the most candid lines in the distillery’s literature: until its house style was set, Kuju chose not to take risks, focusing instead on reproducibility and technical consistency. Sora (空, sky) captures a single moment in the Kuju sky. The first edition, sora 2025, includes peated spirit and depicts “late summer, just as autumn begins, when the sun starts to sink.”

Comparison of current releases

The table below uses the distillery’s published specifications and suggested retail prices in Japan. Prices are tax-included unless noted. We have not listed tasting notes; the distillery publishes its own on each product page.

Bottling Style ABV Japan retail price
Green Dram Blended malt, imported and Kuju malt 46% ¥7,700
THE FIRST Single malt, cask strength, bourbon-led with refill and sherry 58% ¥16,720
michi RD.26 Single malt, non-peated bourbon and refill 50% ¥13,200
tabi #01 Single malt, balanced blend of bold components 53% ¥13,200
Malt and Grain Blended whisky for highballs, Oita only 46% ¥3,500 before tax

Which bottles count as Japanese whisky

This is the question competing guides skip. Under the industry’s 2021 labeling standard, “Japanese whisky” must be distilled and matured in Japan. Kuju’s single malts qualify on the distillery’s own description. Green Dram does not: the distillery says openly that it blends overseas malt, re-casked and matured further in Kuju, with its own new make. That openness is a plus, but buyers should treat it as a blended malt made in Japan rather than a Japanese whisky. Malt and Grain, released in September 2026 and sold only in Oita, contains some malt made from Oita barley grown by the contract farm Green Hojin Nakano (グリーン法人中野); the distillery does not state where the grain whisky comes from. We covered that launch in our Malt and Grain news report. For the rules themselves, read what counts as Japanese whisky and our explainer on world blended whisky.

The farmers’ comment on the Malt and Grain page gives a sense of what this local barley means. Before, they said, barley was something they planted between rice crops; now they grow it “for whisky,” and seeing who receives it has changed their motivation.

Where to buy Kuju whisky outside Japan

United States

We could not confirm a US importer for Kuju. Any bottles that appear are likely to be small specialist allocations. Our US buying guide lists retailers that handle craft Japanese releases. Parcel shipping of whisky from Japan to the US is generally not possible, so do not rely on Japanese online stores.

United Kingdom and Europe

We found no UK or EU retailer stocking Kuju at the time of writing. At auction, check whether a lot is a single malt or Green Dram before bidding. Our guide to importing whisky from Japan explains which routes work for UK and EU buyers.

In Japan and in the air

The realistic options are in Japan. The distillery sells through its own mail-order arm, Yoshu Senmonten TSUZAKI (洋酒専門店TSUZAKI), the Tokiwa department store in Oita, and a liquor shop in AMU Plaza Oita. Distillery-exclusive bottles, such as the second Distillery Exclusive release, C635, are sold only at the distillery shop. Japan Airlines also sold a Single Malt Kuju JAL Exclusive 2026 on international flights in May 2026, blending first-fill bourbon barrel spirit aged three years with spirit from new American oak. If you are visiting Japan, our Tokyo buying guide covers the shops most likely to carry Kyushu craft bottles.

Visiting Kuju Distillery

The distillery is at 6426 Kuju, Kuju-machi, Taketa, along a prefectural road. Large windows let passersby see the stills, and the still house is lit until 10 pm. The shop opens 9:30 to 5:00 on operating days; check the calendar on the distillery website first. Warehouse visits have been offered through campaigns, while full tours are listed as in preparation. Kuju is a good stop on a wider Kyushu trip that might include the stills described in our Kagoshima whisky trail report and our full list of Japanese distilleries.

What this means for drinkers

Kuju is not chasing novelty. Its own writing describes a team that held back from bold experiments until it could make a consistent spirit, chose bourbon casks so the distillate would show, and accepted slow maturation in a cooler climate. THE FIRST is the baseline, michi is the clearest statement of house style, and Green Dram is the affordable entry once you know what is in it. The deeper reason to watch Kuju is the long view: a founder who sold whisky through the lean years and talks about making it “ten years, a hundred years from now.”

Frequently asked questions

Q: Where is Kuju Distillery located?

A: Kuju Distillery is in Kuju town, part of Taketa city in Oita Prefecture, on the island of Kyushu. It sits at roughly 600 meters on the edge of Aso-Kuju National Park, on the former site of the Kobayakawa sake brewery, which closed in 1989.

Q: When did Kuju Distillery start distilling?

A: The distillery received its whisky manufacturing license in January 2021 and ran its first distillation on February 27, 2021. Installation of the Forsyths stills was completed by the local firm Hirano Shoten because pandemic travel restrictions kept the Scottish engineers from coming to Japan.

Q: Is Kuju Green Dram a Japanese whisky?

A: Not under the 2021 industry labeling standard. The distillery says Green Dram blends overseas malt, re-casked and further aged in Kuju, with its own spirit. It is a blended malt made in Japan. Kuju’s single malts, such as THE FIRST and michi, are distilled and matured at the distillery.

Q: Can I buy Kuju whisky in the US or UK?

A: Rarely. We could not confirm an export program or an importer in either market, so any bottles you see will be small specialist allocations or auction lots. The most reliable route is to buy in Oita, at the distillery shop, or through the distillery’s own mail-order store within Japan.

Sources

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