Japan Whisky Press

Hinokami distillery: Makurazaki’s shochu-born whisky

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Hinokami (火の神) is the whisky distillery of Satsuma Shuzo (薩摩酒造), the Kagoshima shochu company best known for Satsuma Shiranami (さつま白波). It sits in Makurazaki (枕崎), a fishing port at the southern tip of Kyushu, and the company describes it as the southernmost whisky distillery on mainland Japan. Whisky production began in February 2023 in a plant that had made sweet-potato shochu since 1975. No mature single malt exists yet, only a handful of small 200ml previews sold in Japan.

Most English coverage stops at the novelties, such as the anechoic tasting room. This guide is built from the distillery’s Japanese-language pages and Satsuma Shuzo’s own statements, and explains what the company is trying to make and which production choices follow from that.

A shochu plant that became a whisky distillery

Satsuma Shuzo was founded in June 1936 as Satsuma Godo Shusei (薩摩合同酒精) and took its current name in 1949. According to the company’s own timeline, the site now called Hinokami distillery was built in October 1975 as a shochu plant. For nearly half a century it made imo (sweet potato) shochu from the potatoes of the Nansatsu (南薩) area, one of Japan’s largest sweet-potato growing regions.

The move into whisky came in three dated steps. Satsuma Shuzo obtained a whisky production license at Hinokami in December 2022, started making malt whisky in February 2023 and began grain whisky production in December 2023. A visitor center opened inside the site in January 2026. The company belongs to the same group as Hombo Shuzo (本坊酒造), which has made Mars whisky for decades; our guide to Hombo Shuzo and Mars whisky covers that side of the family. As we reported when the third New Born preview was announced, Hinokami drew technical support from sister distilleries in the group to get started.

Why a shochu maker was ready for casks

The less obvious part of the story is that Satsuma Shuzo had been working with barrels long before 2022. Its barley shochu Kannoko (神の河), which the distillery says was created to be a “world-standard” barley shochu, is aged in wood. To support that, the company set up a cooperage in 1995 at its Ei (頴娃) shochu distillery and moved it to Hinokami in October 2003, rebuilding it as a 525-square-meter workshop. That cooperage, and the people trained in it, transferred straight into the whisky project.

Where the name comes from

The distillery takes its name from its address, Hinokami-kitamachi (火之神北町) in Makurazaki. The company says the place name traces to Yamasachihiko (山幸彦), a figure from the eighth-century chronicles Kojiki and Nihon Shoki who is also called the god of fire and is said to have stopped here on a journey. That is local tradition, not history, but “fire” is literally in the address, and the brand is built on it.

RED philosophy: what “elegant” means at Hinokami

The distillery calls its brand statement “RED PHILOSOPHY,” and the red is meant to carry several ideas at once. In its own words, the color stands for the passion and curiosity of the people making the whisky, the warm climate of mainland Japan’s southern tip, the history and tradition in the place name, and the “elegant” flavor the distillery is aiming for. It names the target style “HINOKAMI RED.”

The most useful line on the page is a plain one. What Hinokami says it pursues is a “beautiful whisky with a core” (芯のある美しいウイスキー). The Japanese word shin (芯) means the core or backbone of something, so the phrase signals a whisky that is refined but not thin. The company lists the parts it wants: bright aromatics, complexity and what it calls an elegance with “a single line running through it.”

The page also frames the project around “people, skill and environment” (人・技・環境). Many new distilleries lead with equipment. Satsuma Shuzo leads with what it had before the stills arrived: shochu distillers, barrel makers, and a coastal site with groundwater from volcanic soil.

The award line the company keeps quoting

When HINOKAMI NEW BORN #1 was named the Young Spirit category winner in the Japanese New Make and Young Spirit class at the World Whiskies Awards 2026, Satsuma Shuzo’s statement focused on one detail. The blind-tasting judges opened their comment with “At the harbour with a sea breeze, faintly smoky.” The company said the judges almost certainly did not know Makurazaki is a port town, and took the words as a sign that its idea of “a place where fire meets the sea” (火と海の交わる場所) was already showing in very young spirit.

One judge’s phrase is thin evidence of terroir, but it shows what Hinokami wants to be known for. As our guide to reading Japanese whisky awards explains, a young-spirit category win ranks a small field of entries, not a mature whisky.

How the malt whisky is made

The production page reads like a list of choices made to protect a light, fruity spirit.

Clear wort and long fermentation

Hinokami mills its malt to a base ratio of 2:7:1 husk, grits and flour. It says it regularly runs batches with even less flour to draw off clearer wort, because clear wort fermentation produces more esters, the compounds behind fruity and floral aromas. Fermentation uses ale yeast together with distillery yeast and runs for about 90 hours. The distillery pays particular attention to the late lactic fermentation, which it credits with depth, complexity and a supple texture.

Tall stills and upward lyne arms

The pot stills are lantern-shaped. The wash still is 3.2 meters tall and the spirit still 2.8 meters, and the distillery says they are reputed to be the tallest stills of their specification. The lyne arms are narrow and angled upward at 10 degrees, and condensing is done with shell-and-tube condensers. Height and an upward lyne arm both increase reflux, sending heavier vapors back into the still so that a lighter spirit reaches the condenser. The equipment was built with the know-how of Miyake Seisakusho (三宅製作所), a Japanese engineering firm the distillery says has helped launch many of the country’s whisky distilleries.

The final control is human. Hinokami says it runs a sensory check on every distillation and sets the middle cut and tail cut by nose and palate rather than by a fixed timetable. Its peat use is also restrained by default. The first release used malt peated to just 1ppm, which the distillery describes as a deliberate touch of smoke rather than a peated style. If you want context on how Japanese distillers use smoke, see our explainer on peated Japanese whisky.

Grain whisky, cooperage and warehouses

Few Japanese distilleries make both malt and grain whisky on one site, and fewer still repair their own casks. Hinokami does both, and this is where the shochu inheritance is most visible.

Shochu stills feeding a column

Grain whisky starts mainly with American dent corn, ground in a newly installed mill together with malt. After mashing in a Miyake-built tank, the wash ferments for three days with distillery yeast in tanks that used to handle the first stage of shochu production. First distillation takes place in four of the twelve pot stills left from shochu making. The spirit is then redistilled in a new continuous still with 47 plates, each fitted with copper bubble caps to increase copper contact and clean up the spirit. The distillery also makes separate styles, such as normal-pressure distillation followed by a vacuum still, and promises single grain and “single blended” whiskies. Our grain whisky explainer covers why that matters in Japan.

Three coopers and a cherry-wood cask

The cooperage repairs and rejuvenates casks: removing the heads, shaving the inside of tired barrels and charring them again, and replacing staves when casks crack or leak. The distillery says Japan has only about 60 coopers in total, and three of them work here. Its stated plans include rebuilding bourbon barrels into hogsheads. The first visible result is the Makurazaki Whisky Matsuri 2026 bottling, matured in a tub-shaped cask the cooperage made entirely from cherry wood. The company explains that cherry is hard to bend and usually only appears as cask heads, but it wanted “to express cherry with the whole cask.” For background on wood choices, see our guide to Japanese whisky cask types.

Tall racks and an 8°C spread

There are three warehouses, one for shochu, one for malt and one for grain. Both whisky warehouses use high racking: eight tiers, about 13 meters, for malt, and up to 19 tiers, about 28 meters, for grain. The distillery says the top and bottom of the racks can differ by up to about 8°C in summer, so spirit made on the same day matures differently depending on where it sits, which gives its blenders more range. Makurazaki is warm for most of the year, but the company notes that snow can fall in winter. Combined with salty sea air, it calls the result a “dynamic and complex” maturation environment.

Releases so far

Everything Hinokami has sold is a young malt preview or a festival bottling. The table summarizes what the distillery and Japanese trade press have published. Where a figure was not stated, we have left it out.

Release Casks Strength and size Smoke and notes
HINOKAMI NEW BORN #1 (2025) Six first-fill bourbon barrels 50%, 200ml 1ppm peat; WWA 2026 Young Spirit category winner
HINOKAMI Whisky Matsuri Limited Edition 2025 Single first-fill bourbon barrel, cask 521 59% cask strength, 200ml 5ppm; festival-only release
HINOKAMI NEW BORN #2 (April 2026) First-fill bourbon and oloroso sherry 50%, 200ml First release with sherry cask spirit; 3,000 bottles
HINOKAMI NEW BORN #3 (October 2026) Bourbon casks 50%, 200ml 20ppm, the smokiest so far; 3,000 bottles
HINOKAMI Matsuri Limited Edition 2026 In-house cherry-wood tub cask 54%, 200ml Peated and unpeated malt; 564 bottles, on-site sale only

Read in order, the series widens step by step: bright bourbon-cask spirit with almost no smoke, then sherry, then a smokier batch built around the smoke of Makurazaki’s katsuobushi (dried bonito) curing houses, then its own experimental wood. These are the pieces an eventual core whisky could be built from. Hinokami has not announced a date for a core single malt.

Visiting, buying and what it means for drinkers

Tours and the anechoic room

Tours are by reservation only, with no same-day bookings, and close three days before the visit date. A 60-minute standard tour costs 2,000 yen and ends at the RED bar with four whiskies, including unreleased spirit. A 90-minute special plan at 3,000 yen adds a tasting in an anechoic room, where visitors try to tell apart two whiskies designed to differ only slightly. Both start at 10:00 or 13:30, take up to ten people, and the visitor center is closed on Wednesdays. The distillery also published a joint study on tasting in silence, which we covered in our report on Hinokami’s silent tastings. The first Makurazaki Whisky Matsuri runs on November 8, 2026, with a shuttle bus linking Hinokami and Mars Tsunuki, which holds an event the same day.

Makurazaki is about two hours by road from Kagoshima city. Hinokami, Mars Tsunuki and Kanosuke fit into one trip on the Satsuma Peninsula, and the new Kagoshima whisky trail is designed to link them.

Where to buy Hinokami whisky

US: Not available. Satsuma Shuzo has announced no export of Hinokami whisky, and the 200ml previews were sized for the Japanese market. UK and EU: The same applies. Treat any overseas listing with caution. In Japan: Previews reach Japanese retail in limited numbers, the visitor center shop stocks distillery items, and festival bottlings are sold only on site. If you want something from the same group today, Mars whiskies from Tsunuki and Komagatake do reach export markets; see where to buy Japanese whisky in the US.

Why it matters

Hinokami is a bet that a shochu company’s existing strengths, coopers, coastal warehouses and decades of distilling, can produce a distinct whisky faster than starting from nothing. Its choices all point one way: clear wort, long ferments, tall stills, restrained smoke. For drinkers, the first core release should be judged on one question: does it deliver the refined but structured “whisky with a core” the company promised? Follow the wider field in our list of Japanese whisky distilleries.

FAQ

Q: Who owns Hinokami distillery?

A: Hinokami is owned and run by Satsuma Shuzo, a shochu producer based in Makurazaki, Kagoshima, founded in 1936 and known for Satsuma Shiranami sweet-potato shochu. The company is part of the same group as Hombo Shuzo, maker of Mars whisky, and drew on group expertise when it began distilling whisky in 2023.

Q: Is Hinokami single malt available yet?

A: No. As of October 2026 the distillery has released only young malt previews in 200ml bottles, the NEW BORN series and festival editions. Its spirit is roughly two to three years old at most, and Satsuma Shuzo has not announced a launch date for a core single malt or any grain whisky release.

Q: What is the anechoic tasting at Hinokami?

A: It is part of the 90-minute special tour. Visitors enter a room built to absorb almost all sound, with lights lowered, and try to tell apart two whiskies made to differ only slightly. The distillery says removing sound and visual distraction helps people focus on aroma and taste. It costs 3,000 yen and must be booked in advance.

Q: How is Hinokami different from Mars Tsunuki nearby?

A: Both are in the same corporate group and on the Satsuma Peninsula, but Hinokami makes both malt and grain whisky on one site and has its own cooperage, inherited from Satsuma Shuzo’s barrel-aged shochu. Tsunuki is a Hombo Shuzo malt distillery whose whisky already reaches export markets, while Hinokami’s releases remain domestic previews.

Sources

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