Taiko no Kuro Usagi : brown sugar shochu

 

• Name: Taiko no Kuro Usagi
• Type: Brown sugar shochu
• Origin:  Kagoshima prefecture, Amami-shi
• Distiller: Yayoi Shochu
• ABV: 25%
• Price: about 1700 yen

 This rabbit is a tricky critter, to the point that I twice made the way to Okachimachi’s Takeya department store to buy it again. Fact is, I enjoyed it at first sip, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. Let’s draw the first lines about what’s in the bottle to delimit the whereabouts of this black rabbit (Kuro usagi means black rabbit, hence the critter reference up there): this is a brown sugar shochu produced in the Amami islands, the sole officially acknowledged homeland of this kind of spirit. The company distilling Kuro Usagi started out as both a shochu and awamori producer, which probably explains the 30% ABV (customary for awamori) they still use for two of their main brands, Yayoi and Mankoi. This 25% ABV kiddo seems to be the underdog of the line-up though, apparently unassuming, it has quite a few aces up its sleeve.

With brown sugar shochu you can expect something akin to a parallel-world-rum, the same feeling you sometimes have in dreams: things appear familiar but are in fact radically different from what you already know. Here you have the swings between sweetness and chewy bitterness expected from sugar cane spirits but, this notwithstanding, when tasted straight I couldn’t stop thinking: MALT. Oh Lord, has that expired natto messed up my taste buds for good?

It is a lingering hint, but it really reminds me of young Speyside honey, plus the smokiness claimed by the producers really shows up inside the bottle, it is not the kind of flavor you can only pick up by reading the label. In a subdued, discreet form, medicinal smokiness lingers in the background, like an eerie, minor character in a David Lynch movie.

What really wraps everything together though is the citrusy bitterness of orange peel, which keeps on standing strong all the way through the ordeal of the soda+ice dilution which we have come to know as highball. As it often happens, the highball frame puts all the elements into a tidier and more easily drinkable order, though unfortunately the smokiness fades away in the background.

Throughout all this, vanilla is the wallflower of the party, which makes me think we are dealing with reasonably young oak casks. Anyway, Japanese companies are, as usual, stingy when it comes to information about the production process: Yayoy distillery’s web store only states that this was aged five years in unspecified wooden casks. Also, the shochu is called Black Rabbit, but white koji was used in the making of it, this is quite a twist in the plot...

ザ　ブレイクダウン    

Not only is this a very pleasant drink, but it is also interesting enough to become a repeat buy. The reasonable price doesn't hurt either, so i came to appreciate having a black rabbit hopping around the house.

Vote: 4  + 1 + 2 = 7