Ise-Man (伊勢萬), a sake and spirits producer in Ise, Mie Prefecture, opened a paid tasting shop for its whisky and craft gin on August 6, inside a sake brewery building at Okage Yokocho, the historic shopping street directly in front of Ise Grand Shrine’s Naiku (内宮), the shrine’s inner sanctuary. The shop puts a taste of Ise Distillery’s small-batch whisky within a few minutes’ walk of one of Japan’s most visited religious sites, without requiring a trip to a separate distillery building.
The company’s Naiku-mae Sake Brewery has long used spring water from the Isuzu River, which runs past the shrine, to make its sake, Okagesama. Its Ise Distillery, in a separate building nearby, began with shochu and liqueurs before Ise-Man moved into whisky in 2021, a project president Daisuke Kobayashi (小林大介) has called a long-held ambition dating back to the company’s founding. The distillery’s blended whisky Kamiji (神路) won a Double Gold at the International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC) 2024, and in December 2023 the company added Pure Malt Kamiji, blending its own new-make malt with long-aged Scotch. Last December it released Single Malt Whisky Ise -2025 edition-, its first Ise Shima-region whisky made entirely from its own malt, limited to 250 bottles.
The new shop occupies a converted kura (蔵), or storehouse, fitted with a tasting counter, a life-size photo of the pot still, and a whisky cask that has aged spirit continuously since 2003. Tastings, poured neat, on the rocks, or as a highball, run from ¥500 for the Pure Malt Kamiji to ¥1,100 for the Blended Kamiji, with the craft gin Ise-Shin (伊勢神), an IWSC 2026 gold medalist, at ¥500. Kobayashi has framed the shop as a way for shrine visitors to learn Ise makes whisky as well as sake, and to leave with a bottle as a travel souvenir. He also used the opening to walk local press through Japan’s whisky labeling standard: malt must be used, water must be sourced domestically, and the spirit must be saccharified, distilled and bottled in Japan, then matured at least three years in wooden casks. Ise, aged three years and eight months, clears that bar. Kobayashi said around 800 casks are currently maturing at the distillery, with 80 to 100 added most years, and that the long-term goal is a 20-year single malt timed to Ise Grand Shrine’s Shikinen Sengu, the periodic rebuilding ritual that has shaped the shrine’s calendar for centuries.
Why it matters beyond Japan
Ise Distillery’s whisky is not exported, and with only a few hundred casks aging, is unlikely to reach export volume soon; its single malt release so far has topped out at 250 bottles. For now, the shop is best understood as a stop for whisky travelers already headed to Ise Grand Shrine rather than a label to look for on shelves abroad, part of a broader pattern of small Japanese distilleries, from Kanosuke in Kagoshima to Saburomaru in Toyama, opening tasting rooms and shop counters well ahead of any formal export push.
Source: Iseshima Keizai Shimbun (Japanese)
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