An introduction

 This blog chronicles my explorations of the fascinating and somewhat elusive world of Japanese shochu. I am a European man in his forties, living in Japan since 2016: the transition from binge-drinking to a less troglodytic enjoyment of booze has brought me to focus more on the organolectic properties of spirits rather than on their ability to induce stupor. In layman's terms: getting hammered beyond recognition is no longer the priority, flavour is.

My forays in spirits appreciation began with whisky, price hikes and fluctuating quality pushed me into looking a little bit further down the aisles of the liquor shop. Awaiting there were rows and rows of enigmatic shochu bottles: curiosity and thirst met, it was love at first sight.

I am your average drinking prole, though, alas! no sommelier tastebuds grace this tongue of mine and what you'll find here are more or less the log entries of the bottles I buy and drink.
Since information on shochu in the English-speaking world is scant (the great book
'The shochu handbook' by Christopher Pellegrini is an exception) I thought maybe putting my meager two eurocents here wouldn't be completely useless.

Let's stress  it once again: these are the opinions of your average drinking guy, don't take this as spirits-dogma spewed out by the pope of booze.

Ratings are the very definition of subjectiveness but at least they give a rough outline of what to expect, so I tried to come up with my own rating system.
The scale goes from 0 to 10 with the breakdown of: zero to six points for nose and flavour (0 = out of the sewers of hell, 6 = liquid beatitude), zero to two for price/quality ratio (0 = this is a scam!, 2 = this is a steal!), zero to two for likeliness to buy it again (0 = not even at gunpoint, 2 = I'm on my way to the liquor store).

As I'm writing I do not even know if anyone will ever read these lines, it feels like sending out a message in a bottle. Even though in this case, may Marshall McLuhan forgive me,  the bottle is the message.