Hey, I’m Rusty. Welcome to our weekly newsletter, sharing the startup journey of Kamui Whisky K.K. Each week the team will share a story as we set up a craft whisky distillery on a remote, volcanic island in the most northern part of Japan.
If you haven’t been to a Japanese festival you’re missing out.
Stalls upon stalls of of the yummiest Japanese food ever; yakisoba, yaikitori, takoyaki, onigiri, I could go on. All with a backdrop of live music and performances. There is nothing to do but enjoy life.
Oh yea, and there’s lots and lots of alcohol, mostly in the form of beer and shochu. But this year [2019], we smuggled in some whiskey.
First, we need to rewind to a couple of weeks, to when Casey called to get my info to book our flight to Rishiri. Again, I ask ‘Sooo, what are we suppose to do at this festival?’
Casey: ‘I don’t know really but the mayor wants us up there. Maybe you can bring a few bottles of whisky?’
Me: ‘Are we to just show up with bottles of whisky? And what, get the locals drunk?’
Casey: ‘Well, we do have a stand; we can try doing a taste test of different whiskies.’
Me: ‘Do we have any t-shirts?’
Casey: ‘No.’
Me: ‘A banner?’
Casey: ‘No.’
Me: ‘When is this festival again?’
Casey: ‘In two weeks.’
…long pause…
Me: ‘‘And, what are we suppose to do at this festival?’
Two weeks later I was on a plane to Tokyo with 2 suitcases - the largest one filled with bottles of whiskey, t-shirts and a banner.
Before the festival, we set up our first pop-up to fine-tune our ‘Get the locals drunk’ plan to include collecting some data. What we decided to do was a kind of blind taste test: we’d let the customer pick the whiskey and we would then mix that with 3 different local Rishiri spring waters, each independently. The visitor to the booth could choose their whiskey, but we would keep the water blind. The customer wouldn’t know which water was mixed in with their whiskey.
The data points we wanted to collect were: 1) What whiskey profile did the locals gather around, and 2) What local spring water was the best mixer with the whiskey.
Our plan was to find out, through real drinkers, what types of whiskies mixed best with each of the different spring waters, but what came out of this was even more intriguing.
First, the back drop of this taste testing:
I chose to bring Jack Daniel’s Gentlemen Jack, Koval Millet, Leopold Bros. Maryland-Style Rye, and Angels Envy Kentucky Straight Bourbon; a gamut of American Whiskeys. I had a straight Whiskey, a Rye, a Tennesse Whiskey and a Kentucky Bourbon.
Casey, on the other hand, chose to bring a selection of top blended whiskies in the world: Suntory Whisky Toki, Grand Old Parr and Johnny Walker Black Label.
Then we had 3 natural spring waters from Rishiri: Reiho, Kanro, and Kamui spring water.
Let’s talk about this water on Rishiri Island, because I, like Casey on his first visit, was immediately fascinated by it.
I’m not a scientist but I can give you the layman’s explanation of how these springs are formed. This gigantic dormant volcano sits in the middle of the island. The snow and rain gathers in the middle of the volcano. But that water needs to go somewhere so it starts seeping through the many layers of sediment, dirt, volcanic rock, until enough gathers to create the beginning of the spring and gravity and pressure does the rest.
This happens in quite a few locations on Rishiri, with Reiho and Kanro being the most distinct locations. The water is so abundant that locals have tapped it and have been drinking it for generations upon generations.
We used this water in our taste test and were dumbfounded by how much each water changed the flavor of the whiskey.
We’d pour three shots of Jack Daniel’s (or any of the other whiskey we had available) in to three different cups and add a different spring water to each. Surprisingly, each cup tasted unique form the other. Dramatically.
We recorded the results:
The mixed winner was Jack & Kamui
The whiskey winner was Jack Daniel’s.
The water winner was Kamui (you had doubts?)