Zuisen Distillery

photo by BehBeh · CC BY-SA 3.0

The black yeast collected here in 1935 had survived in Tokyo, and it came back in 1998.

The visit takes half an hour and you start with a ten-minute film, subtitled in English. Then you watch the work, and at the end you taste the aged awamori, for free. The distillery recommends the morning, which is less crowded. It is two minutes' walk below Shuri Castle, and the name comes from the castle gate of the same name: the spring that gushes in abundance.

An awamori distillery founded in 1887 in Shuri. In 1935 Professor Sakaguchi Kiichirō, a scholar of fermentation, collected a strain of black yeast at the Kyan distillery, its forerunner, and took it to Tokyo. In 1998 the company discovered that the strain had survived the bombing of Tokyo and was being kept at the University: it brought it back to Okinawa and put it back into production, under the name ushu.

ℹ️ Free visit, about half an hour, from 9:30 to 16:00; closed from 1 to 3 January. For groups of five or more, booking is required, using the online form and at least two working days in advance. The phone is not answered on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. Ten minutes' walk from Shuri Station on the monorail.

🚉 Shuri · 9 min walk

Sources: zuisen.co.jp · okinawa.zuisen.co.jp · oki-park.jp

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