FURUSAWA JYOUZOU（古澤醸造合名会社）

Distillation utilizing the climate and weather

　Processing the sweet potatoes begins with cutting them up, following by washing and removing any spoiled parts. The steamed sweet potatoes are poured onto a moving conveyor-belt and their smell checked to ensure that there are no spoiled parts. The distillery is highly particular about sweet potato quality.

　The earthen-walled mashing room has the advantages of controlling humidity and ensuring only small differences in temperature throughout the year. Since this environment is the same as being in the ground, the pots only need to be half-buried. Stirring, maintenance, and other work is also easy to perform.

　The distillery only uses atmospheric distillation. Following distillation, the cold winter weather is taken advantage of in carrying out filtration by scooping off the oil that floats to the surface of the shochu. Machinery is used to cool the shochu, which acquires a uniform quality once filtrated. However, FURUSAWA JYOUZOU insists on natural filtration, each year producing “shochu that reflects the weather of that year”.

Obi cedar storehouse that can only be found in Nichinan

　The storehouse was built in 2009 using 60-year-old Obi cedar. One reason for using this wood was that the distillery wanted to advertise the quality of Obi cedar, which is a specialty product of Nichinan City. In building the storehouse, consideration was given to the positioning of doors and windows to enable sunlight to enter the building while keeping heat out. Shochu is stored and aged in this Obi cedar storehouse as well as the original earthen-walled storehouse.