Hinokami Distillery (火の神蒸溜所), the whisky arm of Kagoshima shochu maker Satsuma Shuzo (薩摩酒造), will hold the first Makurazaki Whisky Matsuri (枕崎ウイスキー祭り) on Sunday, November 8, 2026, from 10:00 to 16:00 at its site in Makurazaki (枕崎). It is the distillery’s first whisky event since its visitor center opened, and it comes with a festival-only bottle: a malt whisky aged in a tub-shaped cask that the company’s own coopers built entirely from cherry wood. Only 564 bottles exist, and they are sold only to people who show up. For a distillery that started making whisky in February 2023 and has not yet released a regular single malt, it is the most concrete look so far at where its cask program is heading.
What is happening on November 8
According to Satsuma Shuzo’s announcement, the whole distillery becomes the venue this year, including the visitor center that was still under construction a year ago. The company says the program is larger than last year’s. Visitors buy original coins at the entrance for 200 yen each, with discounted bundles available. A malt or grain whisky, served as a highball or neat, costs two coins. Members of the Kagoshima Bartenders Association will be pouring, and local companies and popular restaurants from around the prefecture will run food stalls.
The distillery’s master blender will lead a seminar titled “Journey of HINOKAMI DISTILLERY,” tracing how a site that has made sweet-potato shochu since 1975 turned to whisky in 2023, where the brand stands now and where it wants to go. Each session runs about 60 minutes and includes a tasting of five whiskies. There are two sessions, at 11:00 and 14:00, each limited to 30 people at 3,000 yen including tax, with advance bookings given priority.
Getting there is part of the plan. There is no parking at the distillery itself, so shuttle buses run from a separate lot in Makurazaki. A second shuttle will run roughly every 30 minutes between Hinokami and Mars Tsunuki (マルス津貫), which is holding its own event the same day. For visitors coming from the city, Satsuma Shuzo is selling 45 seats on a round-trip coach from the west exit of Kagoshima-Chuo station. The package costs 4,000 yen and includes ten festival coins. The coach leaves at 8:30 and is scheduled to arrive at 9:45, with the return leaving the distillery at 16:30 and reaching Kagoshima-Chuo around 17:45.
The festival bottle: a whole cask made of cherry wood
The HINOKAMI MATSURI LIMITED EDITION 2026 is a malt whisky at 54% ABV in a 200ml bottle, priced at 5,500 yen including tax. Production is 564 bottles, with a limit of two per person, sold first come, first served at the venue only. The release does not state an age.
The detail that matters is the cask. Cherry (sakura) wood is difficult to bend into staves, so when Japanese producers use it at all, it usually appears only in the cask heads, with oak staves doing most of the work. Satsuma Shuzo says it wanted the cherry character to come from the whole vessel, so its cooperage designed an oke (桶), a straight-sided tub-style cask, built with cherry wood on every surface. The whisky inside is a vatting of peated and unpeated malt. The distillery describes notes of mandarin and green apple, the sweetness of Japanese confectionery such as shio daifuku and kinako, and a mild bitterness it compares to mugwort and green tea. We have not tasted it; those are the producer’s words.
Why this matters
Most new Japanese distilleries buy their casks. Hinokami is one of the few that can make unusual ones from scratch. As our Hinokami distillery guide explains, Satsuma Shuzo set up a cooperage in 1995 to age its barley shochu Kannoko (神の河) in wood, and moved it to the Makurazaki site in 2003. That workshop, and the people trained in it, carried straight over into the whisky project. An all-cherry tub is the kind of experiment that only makes sense when the coopers work down the corridor from the stillhouse.
It also fits a wider trend. Japanese producers are using native woods to set their whisky apart from Scotch, and cherry is one of the most visible examples after mizunara. Kobe Distillery chose sakura casks for part of its first single malt release, announced last week, and our guide to Japanese whisky cask types covers how these woods differ from oak. Hinokami’s approach is more radical: not a cherry finish or cherry heads, but a vessel with no oak surface at all.
The festival is also a regional move. Hinokami and Mars Tsunuki both belong to the Hombo group (see our profile of Hombo Shuzo and Mars whisky), and linking them with a same-day shuttle turns two separate open days into a small whisky route through the south of the Satsuma Peninsula. Both companies sit on the Kagoshima Whisky Trail council, formed this year to bring overseas visitors to the prefecture’s distilleries. Events like this are what that plan looks like in practice. Fans of the style can also look back at HINOKAMI NEW BORN #3, the smoky preview released in October, for the other half of the peated-and-unpeated balance in this bottle.
For readers outside Japan
The festival bottle will not be exported and cannot be ordered online. Satsuma Shuzo says it is sold only to visitors on the day, two per person, so the only way to get one is to be in Makurazaki on November 8. Hinokami’s whisky is not yet distributed abroad, and the distillery has not announced export plans for its first regular single malt.
If you are in Kyushu that weekend, the event is unusually easy to reach without a car. The Kagoshima-Chuo coach removes the main obstacle, since Makurazaki sits at the far southern end of the Satsuma Peninsula. Seminar seats and coach seats are booked through a Japanese-language ticketing page linked from the official festival site, makurazaki-whisky-matsuri.com, and both are limited to 30 and 45 places. Book early, and bring cash for coins in case card payment is limited at the stalls.
If you cannot travel, the practical move is to follow the distillery itself. Hinokami’s 200ml previews show the direction of a single malt expected from 2027 at the earliest. Mars Tsunuki, the sister distillery on the shuttle route, is the nearest equivalent you can buy abroad today; our Tsunuki distillery guide covers its releases. For the full list of Hinokami coverage, see the Hinokami distillery hub.
Source: Satsuma Shuzo via PR TIMES (Japanese)