From sake, shochu and blended whisky to a still of its own.

Sakurao Distillery belongs to SAKURAO Brewery and Distillery Co., Ltd., a drinks company in Hatsukaichi, a city on the Seto Inland Sea just west of Hiroshima. Japanese Wikipedia says the business was founded in October 1918 as a partnership under the name Chugoku Jozo, became a joint-stock company in 1938 and began brewing sake in 1963. Over the decades its range grew to take in sake, shochu, plum wine, liqueurs and mirin. The company counts its own history from 1918 and from the same site: it says it was founded in the Sakurao district of Hatsukaichi, where the distillery stands today.

Whisky was part of the business long before the distillery was. The company’s best-known whisky line was Togouchi, and the Japanese drinks site Nomunication, reporting on 11 December 2017, explained that Togouchi was made from imported whisky that was blended and aged in Hiroshima, so that nothing was actually being distilled in the prefecture. The same report said Chugoku Jozo had unveiled a new distillery on its Sakurao site and would start production there in mid-December 2017, making both gin and single malt whisky, with stills from the German maker Arnold Holstein.

The company’s own timeline matches that sequence. It says it established SAKURAO DISTILLERY at its founding site in 2017, announced Sakurao Gin in 2018, the year of its hundredth anniversary, and launched its first single malts in 2021. On 9 March 2021 the company itself changed its name from Chugoku Jozo to SAKURAO Brewery and Distillery; Japanese Wikipedia, citing the company’s notices of that month, says the new name was meant to refresh its image and to signal that it would keep working on the Sakurao site.

A place name on every bottle, and a gin built from Hiroshima.

The brand’s naming is geographical. Sakurao is the district of Hatsukaichi where the company was founded and where the distillery stands, so the same word now names the place, the distillery, the gin, a single malt and, since 2021, the company itself. Togouchi, the older whisky name, comes from a second site: Japanese Wikipedia, citing the company, says Togouchi in the mountain town of Akiota is where the company stores and ages sake, shochu and whisky in a disused railway tunnel, a trial bore dug for a planned extension of the Kabe Line that was never completed.

The gin came first. Nomunication reported in February 2018 that two gins, Sakurao Gin Original and Sakurao Gin Limited, would go on sale on 5 March 2018. It described the Original as a recipe of nine botanicals, mostly citrus such as lemon, yuzu and mandarin, and the Limited as a recipe of seventeen that included Hiroshima lemon, oyster shells, hinoki and a hint of sakura, and reported the company’s statement that the botanicals, juniper included, were sourced in Hiroshima. The company still frames the gin around local ingredients, describing Hiroshima’s citrus and juniper growing wild in the area. Later gins have extended the line: the company’s site lists Sakurao Gin White Herbs and a seasonal series called Hamagou, whose 2026 edition it calls the ninth release.

The whisky followed on a pair of contrasting sites. Nomunication reported in May 2021 that the first two single malts, Sakurao 1st Release Cask Strength and Togouchi 1st Release Cask Strength, would be released on 1 July 2021. The first had been matured at the distillery beside a harbour on the Inland Sea; the second had been aged in the Togouchi tunnel. The company now describes the two sites as the sea and the Chugoku Mountains, and its range sets the Sakurao and Togouchi single malts beside blended whiskies sold under the Togouchi and Sogaini names.

Design and documentation.

The seven names in this group are all Japanese whisky distilleries: Fuji Gotemba, Nagahama, Akkeshi, Shizuoka, Saburomaru, Sakurao and Yuza. Some sit inside long-established drinks companies, some were built by sake or shochu makers adding a new spirit to an old business, and others are newer ventures built specifically to make whisky, in regions far from one another.

The phrase “Japanese whisky” on a label carries more weight than it used to. In 2021 the Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association introduced a voluntary labelling standard, with a grace period that ended in 2024, under which, English Wikipedia says, a whisky sold as Japanese must be fermented, distilled, matured and bottled in Japan. A distillery’s identity therefore rests not only on its label and its name but on where its spirit is actually made, how long it has been aged and what, if anything, has been blended in.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded the distillery and when, who owns it now, where its whisky is distilled and matured, and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Two maturation sites, one name for the whole company.

What the distillery changed was where the liquid begins. Before December 2017 the Togouchi name stood for whisky that was blended and aged in Hiroshima but not distilled there, as Nomunication reported at the time; since July 2021 the same name has also appeared on a single malt made at Sakurao. The company keeps both kinds of bottle in its range, so its lineup now spans gin, single malt and blended whisky alongside the sake, shochu and liqueurs that came before them.

The distillery is also a place to visit. The company’s site offers reservations for tours of SAKURAO DISTILLERY and posts notices about its visitor centre’s opening days.

The name needs a little care. The company’s website is sakuraobd.co.jp; the earlier Chugoku Jozo name still appears in older articles and on older bottles, and Japanese Wikipedia files the company under its former name. Sakurao should also not be confused with the many Japanese products named after sakura, the cherry blossom.

For a design guide, Sakurao shows how a drinks maker can build a new spirits brand from its own address, letting a district name carry gin, whisky and finally the company itself, while an older whisky name is tied to a railway tunnel in the hills. Compare Kanosuke, the seaside whisky distillery a Kagoshima shochu family opened in the same year, and Nagahama Distillery, the Shiga craft whisky distillery. For this guide we use inland-sea blue, Hiroshima lemon and cask amber with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Sakurao Distillery’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.