Gin for the Win
After vodka and whisky, is gin the new on-trend tipple? chek wong speaks to the founders of a gin that crosses the bridge between East and West
gin, immortalised in William Hogarth’s bleak urbanscape Gin Lane as a sinful and disreputable spirit, has seen an about-turn in its image recently. The resurgence has been helped by the popularity of glamorous cocktail bars as well as a raft of high-quality, premium gins entering the market. An interesting contender is Ki No Bi, a no-holds-barred craftsman gin established by Brits David Croll and Marcin Miller two years ago. While the British have been at the forefront of the craft gin movement (think Sipsmith, the London distillery now owned by Beam Suntory), finding a gin made in Japan is not so common. Having distributed Japanese whiskies for over a decade however, Croll and Miller are highly tuned in to the subtle undercurrents of changing consumer palates. As Miller explains, “In 2005 we started working with Japanese whiskies from smaller, independent producers. The Japanese whisky landscape has changed significantly in that period, and we’re always looking for new and interesting things to do. And so the idea came to me that we could bring together the prestige of luxury Japanese spirits with this dynamic wave of gin and create Japan’s first craft gin.” Thus Ki No Bi was born.
The secret to Ki No Bi lies in the careful distillation of 11 botanicals that make up the final product. Grouped into six flavour categories (base, citrus, tea, spice, fruity/floral and herbal), each set of botanicals is distilled separately in copper stills and then blended together.
“If you distil everything together, which is the most common,” says Croll, “inevitably there is a certain amount of averaging going on. You can only take one cut, and that means you’re missing some of the desirable flavours and elements and getting some things you don’t want. Whereas if we do each thing separately, it’s a bit like buying a bespoke suit, every little bit has been individually measured and checked.”
Formulating the initial recipe was laborious, requiring intensive research into Japanese ingredients and experimenting with over 60 different botanicals. Croll adds, “Our distiller, Alex Davies, came to Japan way before we even had a distillery, so that he could use the first six months of his time in Japan to learn about all these tastes and flavours and aromas to create a palette from which we could paint Ki No Bi.”
The core flavour of the gin is juniper (currently sourced from Macedonia), but the Ki No Bi recipe also calls for authentically Japanese ingredients such as yuzu peels and hinoki wood chips. “The objective,” says Miller, “was to create something that anyone in the world who knew about gin would recognise as being a gin...but we wanted to add a distinctive Japanese accent so we’ve created that accent through the use of local botanicals.” Some of the ingredients are quite unique, such as the inclusion of Gyokuro green tea from Uji. “Tea is very difficult to work with,” explains Miller. “It’s quite possible to over-extract, to get tannic and astringent, which we really don’t want. There’s a delicacy that we strive to achieve, so when you taste just the tea distillate that we produce, it has a sweetness and freshness that is very alluring and that comes through on the finish
as well as on the palate of the final gin.” These local botanicals are sourced from dedicated farmers who harvest the produce when they are in season at the peak of flavour, a testament to the ethos of Ki No Bi, which means “The Beauty of the Seasons”.
The Kyoto Distillery, which makes Ki No Bi, is located in a quiet industrial area of southern Kyoto, surrounded by squat, nondescript buildings. Croll, who resides in Kyoto, visits the distillery several times a week, while Miller, who is based in UK, visits once or twice a year.
What did locals think about a gin distillery being set up at their doorstep? Croll answers, “I think people were very surprised, because gin hasn’t been a big thing in Japan. If you go to a cocktail bar, it’s there, but it’s always just been like a workhorse for bartenders. To actually see it happening in Kyoto, which is a very traditional, old-fashioned city with a long history, it was surprising, but I must say that the support we have had has been incredible — from the city government, the mayor, and local companies that have been in business for 15 generations. We’ve been really welcomed, and that was important to us because we wanted to be a genuine Kyoto product and part of the environment. We didn’t want to just slap the Kyoto name on the bottle and then sell it overseas.”
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Croll and Miller must be feeling considerably chuffed. A year after Ki No Bi launched, Suntory and Nikka came out with their own made-in-japan gins. Reflecting on the successful reception in Japan and overseas, Miller says, “It was almost as if people were waiting for it but they didn’t know they were waiting for it. The Japanese are great supporters of their own products — you only need to look at Venture Whisky by Ichiro Akuto. His was the first true craft distillery in Japan. Before he started it was just the big guys churning out lots and lots of products. He really changed things and now his bottles sell out instantaneously.”
“When we launched, a lot of people who weren’t traditional gin drinkers were buying it to try. They’d say, ‘Oh I really like this, it’s very approachable’, and they’d find their own ways to drink it,” he adds. This last statement speaks to the greatest appeal of gin — its versatility. More characterful than vodka and less overpowering than whisky, gin makes a suitable base for cocktails and is found in some of the world’s greatest mixes, including the iconic Singapore Sling. Miller, however, likes his Ki No Bi straight from the freezer into a martini glass, “almost as naked as it could be”. Croll prefers the classic Martini while his wife, who is Japanese, enjoys it with cold water, a mix known as “Mizuwari”. “Gin is so accessible, always,” quips Miller.
The arena of premium gins appears to be reaching saturation point, but the duo are confident they have laid a solid foundation for Ki No Bi. “I think there’s going to be a relatively big shakeout in gin, because there are too many gins,” said Miller. “To have a chance of success, you need several things. I think you need to have an exceptional liquid, a great story and your own production — and we have that. There are many gin brands out there that are being made by third parties, so they’re just brands, not crafted spirits. What The Kyoto Distillery is all about is this Japanese concept of ‘kaizen’ — small incremental improvements, always striving for the best.” Or, as David says, “A truly excellent gin is one you want to come back to.”
“We wanted to add a distinctive Japanese accent so we’ve created that accent through the use of local botanicals” — Marcin Miller