Japan Whisky Press

Shindo distillery: Shinozaki’s single malt in Fukuoka

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Shindo Distillery (新道蒸溜所) is a single malt distillery in Asakura (朝倉), Fukuoka Prefecture, run by Shinozaki (篠崎), a family brewer of sake, barley shochu and amazake. It began distilling malt in August 2021, the first whisky distillery in Fukuoka according to local reporting at the time. Its first bottled single malt, SHINDO Experimental 01, arrived in June 2025. Since then it has added a second Experimental, a malt swap with another young distillery, and in June 2026 a blend built entirely from whisky it makes itself.

English coverage of Shindo mostly repeats release specs. This guide draws on Shinozaki’s Japanese pages and a long first-person account by its eighth-generation head, Michiaki Shinozaki (篠崎倫明). It covers why a shochu house went into malt, how a 100-year-old koji experiment shaped the company, and what the warm Kyushu climate does to the spirit.

Why a shochu house went into malt whisky

A family that kept doing unusual things

Shinozaki describes itself as a brewer with roughly 200 years of history in Asakura, a farming area in central Fukuoka near the Chikugo River (筑後川). Its sake is sold as Kunigiku (国菊) and Hiramatsu (比良松). Its best-known product is not alcoholic at all. Kunigiku amazake, a sweet rice-and-koji drink, runs to about two million bottles a year by the company’s count.

The company started making barley shochu about 40 years ago. It then leaned hard into barrel-aged shochu, sold as Sennen no Nemuri (千年の眠り). About 15 years ago it added rum from local sugarcane. The whisky project grew out of that habit of taking side roads.

The Takamine story

Michiaki Shinozaki traces the company’s attitude to one figure: Jokichi Takamine (高峰譲吉), the Japanese chemist best known for isolating adrenaline. Before that, Takamine was invited to the United States to make whisky with koji instead of malted barley, using koji’s strong power to convert starch to sugar. The venture failed. In Shinozaki’s telling, it was blocked by conservative interests in the American industry of the day.

His father told him the story as a child, admiring Takamine’s willingness to break with convention on scientific grounds. When Michiaki joined the family business after graduate school, his father asked whether he remembered Dr. Takamine. The barrel-aged barley shochu had a purpose all along. His father had obtained the American patent for Takamine’s koji whisky method and was preparing to recreate it.

The result, TAKAMINE KOJI FERMENTED WHISKEY, went on sale in the US in 2021. It is sold only there. Under US rules a spirit made with koji can still be called whiskey if other production requirements are met. For the wider context, see our explainer on koji whisky and its shochu roots.

From backlash to a malt distillery

The koji whiskey drew criticism in Japan. Shinozaki recalls people saying anything made with koji is not whisky, and others saying it would damage the reputation of Japanese whisky. His reply is that it is an American project, sold in America, that aims to open a new spirits category there rather than borrow Japanese whisky’s prestige.

He also took something else from the episode. The heat of the argument showed him how much whisky drinkers care. That, he writes, is why the company picked whisky as its next challenge. In 2021 it built a new facility in the Shindo district of Asakura and started making malt whisky with no koji at all. It is a separate project from the American whiskey, with separate equipment.

The name, the slogan and the philosophy

Shindo means “new road”

Shindo (新道) is the old name of the district where the site stands, and the two characters literally mean “new road.” Shinozaki builds its branding on that pun. The site’s Japanese tagline, 王道で、新道 (odo de, shindo), sets the “royal road” of tradition against the new one. The company’s English rendering is “The Classic Path, The New Way.” The flowing logotype, according to the brand guidelines, is meant to suggest both a new path and the water of the nearby Chikugo River, the largest river in Kyushu.

The umbrella brand is SHINDO LAB. It covers the malt distillery, a winery, and a shop called SHINDO LAB STAND on a site of about 5,500 tsubo, roughly 18,000 square meters. The company’s older works, now called Asakura Distillery, makes shochu, rum, gin and grain whisky.

“The quest for the original”

Every Shinozaki page repeats the same motto: THE QUEST FOR THE ORIGINAL. In his account, Michiaki explains it bluntly. Following the crowd, he says, is no fun. Drinks are a luxury, and a company their size can afford to chase products that might become future standards rather than copies of current ones.

The distillery page sets a bigger goal. It says Shindo wants to raise the value of Japanese whisky and change the world’s assumptions about whisky, from Fukuoka. Plenty of craft distilleries talk this way. Shindo is unusual in backing it with detail about method.

Humility on the label

The ambition comes with a notable modesty about the product. Shindo named its first range the Experimental Series. Its Japanese text says that calling a first release a finished product would be presumptuous, and that it would offer “the best proposal we can make right now” instead. It describes itself as a humble newcomer with deep respect for the pioneers of Japanese whisky. That is a fair way to read every bottle so far: a progress report from a distillery still finding its style.

How Shindo makes its spirit

Chasing the aromas below one percent

Shinozaki had never made malt whisky before 2021. Michiaki says the team studied under a well-known distiller who had worked at a major Japanese whisky company, though he does not name that person. From there, it chose to develop its own method on what he calls a chemical basis.

The stated target is unusual. Shindo says it aims for “minor aromas” that make up less than one percent of the total aroma profile. It says it sets a scientific rationale for every stage, from handling the raw material through mashing, fermentation and distillation. The aromas it names are lactones, which it describes as heavy, sweet, milky and fatty, and a green aldehyde with a fresh, grassy character.

Two yeasts in one ferment

The clearest technical choice is in fermentation. Most distilleries ferment with one yeast strain. Shindo adds a second, proprietary strain alongside the standard one. It credits this with a thick, layered new make and the lactone character that runs through all its releases.

The rest of the setup is described only in general terms. The distillery says it installed the latest custom-built equipment, sets detailed parameters from scientific evidence, and keeps skilled staff working by hand at key stages. It does not publish the number, size or shape of its stills, its washback material, or its annual output, so we have left those out.

A warm place to mature

Asakura sits inland in southern Fukuoka, close to the Chikugo River. That is far warmer than Hokkaido or the Japanese Alps, where many new distilleries chose to build. When it put its first spirit into cask, Michiaki said the team was curious to see how it would grow in the “warm climate of Shindo.”

The company now says plainly what it thinks heat does. In its Cross Distillery notes, it says the warm environment draws vanilla out of bourbon barrels relatively fast, on top of the lactone sweetness from the new make. That is the logic behind Shindo’s young releases. A hotter warehouse moves the spirit faster, so a four-year-old bottling here is not the same as a four-year-old from a cool northern site. It also means more evaporation, which is the usual cost of warm-climate aging.

The releases so far

From new make to Experimental 02

Shindo’s first product was its unaged new make, sold for ¥2,750. Michiaki calls it a “baby whisky,” meant to let drinkers meet the spirit before it grows. He suggests trying it with water or in a highball. Young-spirit bottlings called NEW BORN followed, and Shindo lists a World Whiskies Awards 2025 gold and category win for NEW BORN 3.

Experimental 01, released in June 2025, set the template. Shindo says it made more than 100 trial vattings with three aims: show the house character, keep any immature edge down, and make whisky more fun. It found about 48% ABV best for drinking neat, but bottled at 50% so drinkers could add their own water and look for their preferred strength. Experimental 02 followed about eight months later with older spirit and a different set of casks.

Release Type Cask make-up (producer’s figures) ABV
SHINDO Experimental 01 Single malt, non-peated 91% bourbon, 4% new Mizunara, 4% Oloroso sherry, 1% refill Scotch 50%
SHINDO Experimental 02 Single malt, non-peated 89% bourbon, 6% Oloroso sherry, 5% brandy Not confirmed
SHINDO Cross Distillery 01 Blended malt (Shindo and Niigata Kameda) Non-peated bourbon-cask malt from both distilleries 48%
SHINDO The Blended 2026 Non Peated Blended (Shindo malt, Asakura grain) Includes bourbon, wine and Mizunara casks 46%

Swapping malt with Niigata Kameda

Shindo’s Cross Distillery project is unusual for Japan. Distillers in Scotland trade spirit all the time, but Japan’s industry grew up without that habit. For the first release, Shindo and Niigata Kameda (新潟亀田), which also began distilling in 2021, swapped non-peated bourbon-cask malt. Each then vatted the other’s spirit only with its own bourbon-cask malt. Shindo calls Kameda both a rival and a kindred spirit.

Shindo’s notes are frank about the contrast. Kameda aims for a clear spirit through wooden washbacks and a narrow middle cut. Shindo aims for weight through multiple yeasts and warm maturation. Both want a sweet whisky with a long finish. We covered the twin bottlings in our report on the Niigata Kameda and Shindo malt swap. Shindo’s version sold for ¥16,500 at Japanese retailers.

A blend made only from its own whisky

SHINDO The Blended 2026 Non Peated went on sale in Japan on June 15, 2026, at ¥5,940 for 700ml. Shinozaki says customers asked for an everyday whisky for mizuwari and highballs. The malt comes from Shindo. The grain whisky comes from the Asakura works and is made from Haruka Nijo (はるか二条), a brewing barley grown in Asakura and widely planted in northern Kyushu.

The grain process is spelled out in unusual detail. The first distillation runs in a pot still under reduced pressure, at a lower boiling point, to avoid scorching the wash. The second runs through a hybrid still with copper to cut sulfury DMS compounds. Both sides of the blend are distilled by the company in Japan, which matters under Japan’s labeling rules. Our guide to what counts as Japanese whisky explains why. For more on how grain spirit is made in Japan, see our Japanese grain whisky explainer.

What this means if you are choosing a bottle

Buying into a story with a method

Shindo is not a distillery with a long back catalog. Every bottle so far is young, and the company says so itself. What you are buying is a clear, documented idea: a dense, sweet new make from two yeasts, matured fast in a warm place, released step by step. The Experimental numbering lets you follow that progress.

It also helps to separate the two Shinozaki whiskies. If a bottle says TAKAMINE and is sold in the US, it is the koji-fermented American project, not Shindo single malt. Shindo bottles are malt whisky made in Fukuoka, with no koji. In Kyushu, the closest comparison is Kanosuke, another shochu family that turned to malt and matures its spirit in a similarly warm southern climate.

Where to buy Shindo whisky

In Japan, releases go through Japanese liquor retailers, Shinozaki’s own online shop and the SHINDO LAB STAND shop at the site. The shop opens 10:00 to 16:00 and closes on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

In the UK, Berry Bros. & Rudd released Experimental 01 in late 2025. According to Hypebeast’s report, 300 bottles were allocated to the UK, sold in bond from the merchant’s own website. Check Berry Bros. & Rudd and the specialist shops in our UK buying guide for later releases.

In the US and EU, we could not find a regular retail listing for Shindo single malt as of October 2026. Buying from Japan means a retailer that ships abroad or a proxy service, and some countries restrict this. Our guide to importing whisky from Japan explains the rules.

Visiting the distillery

Shindo runs a distillery tour of about two hours, tasting included, for ¥5,000 per person and up to 10 people per group. Some guides speak English, and you book those slots separately. The route has stairs and is not wheelchair accessible. The site is about five minutes by car from the Asakura exit of the Oita Expressway.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Is Shindo whisky made with koji?

A: No. Shindo single malt is made from malted barley at a facility built in 2021 and uses no koji. Shinozaki’s koji-fermented spirit is a separate product, TAKAMINE KOJI FERMENTED WHISKEY, made and sold only in the US. It recreates Jokichi Takamine’s century-old patent.

Q: Does Shindo make peated whisky?

A: Yes, in part. Shindo has released both peated and non-peated new make, and its peated new make won gold at the 2024 World Whiskies Awards, by the distillery’s account. Both Experimental single malts released so far, and The Blended 2026, are non-peated.

Q: Why is Shindo’s whisky so young?

A: The distillery only started making malt in August 2021, so no older stock exists. Shindo also argues that Asakura’s warm climate pulls flavor from the cask faster than cooler sites do. It names its range “Experimental” to signal these are early steps, not finished statements.

Q: Is SHINDO The Blended Japanese whisky?

A: Shinozaki labels it a blended Japanese whisky. The malt is distilled at Shindo and the grain at the company’s Asakura works, from barley grown in Asakura. It does not rely on imported whisky, which is the main issue under Japan’s 2021 labeling standard.

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