Sakurao Distillery (Chugoku Jozo)

Hiroshima Prefecture’s Chugoku Jozo is a long-established sake brewery founded in 1918. In fact, the history of whisky making is deep, and we manufactured and sold malt whisky from 1938 to 1989. At that time, distilled original sake was stored in a storage facility utilizing JR West’s railway testing tunnel in Togochi. In 2008, we started selling “Togochi whisky”, which is made by blending raw sake stored in storage in Togochi with imported original sake. (90% is said to be exported to Europe.)

In 2018, in order to challenge the new possibilities of making western sake, we introduced new facilities and established sakurao distillery, a craft distillery from Hiroshima. Craft Gin’s “Sakurao Jin” is now the main product, but we plan to launch a single malt whisky that has matured for three years in 2021.