Distillery Spotlight: Ki No Bi Kyoto Gin, Kyoto Distillery

Region: Kyoto, Japan

In recent years, Japanese craft gin brands have been slowly but surely finding their way onto the shelves of gin lovers globally. At present, Japan is home to over 30 craft gin distilleries, each placing their own Japanese spin on the juniper spirit by incorporating uniquely Japanese ingredients like green tea, yuzu and sansho peppers. Even mainstream beverage giants like Suntory and Nikka, who have historically eschewed the gin market, are now firmly in the ring, with plans to expand their production capacity of gin to capture rising demand for Japanese gin exports.

Yet this wasn’t always the case. Just eight short years ago, Japan did not have a single dedicated gin distillery. For many producers, there was a perspective that gin was simply a prelude to the more respectable act of making whisky – given that gin was quicker to produce and didn’t require aging, hence could be sold off for immediate cash flow while the distillery waited for their stock of whisky to mature.

It wasn’t until 2014 when Japan’s very first dedicated gin distillery, Kyoto Distillery, came onto the scene that a perspective shift was set in motion.

By 2016, Kyoto Distillery had launched Japan’s first craft gin, Ki No Bi Kyoto Dry Gin. Translating to “Beauty of the Seasons”, Ki No Bi Gin is an award-winning Japanese gin inspired by Kyoto produce and artisans. In many ways, it heralded a new era in Japan’s craft gin industry, helping to dispel the perception of gin as a transitional spirit, or “toriaezu” (meaning “for the time being” in Japanese) as co-founder Nick Kroll describes it.

The team at Kyoto Distillery (Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

Was there really a point to trying to compete with the multitude of Japanese whisky distilleries that had been mushrooming across the country in the past decade? For Kyoto Distillery’s founders, Noriko Kakuda Croll, David Croll and Marcin Miller, creating a gin good enough to raise the respectability and acceptance of the category in and of itself seemed a much worthier endeavour. Thus, the distillery was established with a straightforward philosophy: not to be an expert at all things; rather that it is best to try and master one. It’s also on the back of this that the distillery made and has since maintained its commitment to solely making gin.

In today’s Distillery Spotlight, we break down the process of making Ki No Bi gin. Forget being a Jack of All Trades, Kyoto Distillery is a Master of One. Something tells us no one will have a problem with this at all… 

The Ingredients

Achieving their lofty ambition of creating a high-quality, uniquely Japanese gin naturally necessitates drawing upon the country’s bountiful local ingredients and artisan expertise. And this, no doubt, made the decision to set up Kyoto distillery in Kyoto all that much easier. After all, where better than Kyoto to be on the doorstep of fresh fruits, spices and teas, as well as the famously fragrant Fushimi water.

There’s a uniquely Japanese inflection to every ingredient component that goes into Ki No Bi gin - from the base spirit to the blend of botanicals, and finally, even the water used to blend and dilute the distillates.

(Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

For starters, Ki No Bi uses a base spirit from a rice distillate. In Japan, rice has deep cultural significance, being used for decades by shochu and sake makers. The rice spirit also lends to a fragrant, mildly sweet aroma and creates a velvety texture that the distillery believes translates into a smoother tasting experience. Quality doesn’t come cheap though, as Ki No Bi’s rice spirit is estimated to cost around three times more than the typical grain spirits used by many commercial gin distilleries today.

As for the botanicals? 11 botanicals, many of which are sourced locally from Kyoto, go into producing Ki No Bi gin. Apart from juniper, other noteworthy ingredients include:

• Fresh Yuzu peel - a Japanese citrus fruit harvested only once a year in November from Hokuto Nouen in Ayabe;
• Akamatsu wood chips – a crisp red pine with citrus notes and warming undertones of camphor, woodland, moss and lavender;
• Green Sansho – a Japanese peppercorn that delivers warming spice and oiliness to the spirit.

(Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

Interestingly, Ki No Bi divides its 11 botanicals into six groupings, called Elements. These are Base, Citrus, Herbal, Spice, Green Tea and Fruity & Floral. Each Element was curated to deliver a unique flavour and aroma influence on the final product. Separating out these ingredients into six Elements actually complicates the distillation process later on, yet nonetheless vital to creating a gin spirit with depth and complexity from the nose to the finish.

Finally, the water. While water is often the largest component of bottled gins, it often gets overlooked during the gin creation process. This is sometimes the case with city-based distilleries that lack access to a natural source of spring water, contending instead with filtered water from a city or municipal source. As a practical matter, the addition of water to gin distillates consequently tends to serve only the function of dilution.

(Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

However, the team at Kyoto Distillery saw the addition of water not just as a means to dilution, but as an additional opportunity to refine the taste of the final product. Thankfully, they were able to source famous Fushimi water directly from the well of their neighbouring sake brewery, Tsukino Katsura. Fushimi water is a pure, mineral-rich ground water sought out by sake brewers in Kyoto for its unique sweetness and mellowness. Similarly, Kyoto Distillery believes that their use of Fushimi water helps add complexity to the flavour and texture of Ki No Bi Gin.

(Image Source: Kyoto Journal)

Ki No Bi Gin’s commitment to being locally integrated shines through in their ingredients, and along the way, it’s earned them some street cred amongst the Kyoto spirits and bartending community. A case in point: during the annual harvesting of Yuzu fruit, it’s become somewhat of a heartening practice for local bartenders and food industry participants in Kyoto to volunteer to pick fruit alongside the Kyoto Distillery team members. Quite befittingly, they are rewarded for their involvement with a bottle of Ki No Bi Gin.

Distilling the Seasons

What truly sets Ki No Bi Gin apart from other gin brands is its unique and laborious method of separate batch distillation.

(Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

As mentioned above, Kyoto Distillery divides the 11 botanicals used in Ki No Bi Gin into 6 Elements. Unlike most gin distilleries that usually distil their spirit in one go, adding and infusing the botanicals into a central distillate, Kyoto Distillery first macerates the ingredients in each Element group in their own individual batch of rice spirit. Each batch is then distilled separately. This is a laborious process, but it allows the distillery to tailor the specific temperature in a way that is optimised to the type of botanicals contained in that Element.

Kyoto Distillery's Master Distiller Alex Davies (Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

Once distillation is complete, the distillery then goes through the painstaking process of blending the six distillates together. It’s at this point that the Fushimi water is used to balance the different flavored distillates, and created the final product. The blending process is intricate work, and is rooted in the idea of “konwa”, a Japanese concept of creating harmony through combination.

(Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

Finally, when the gin is ready, it is hand bottled by the team into Ki No Bi’s glass bottles. True to its ethos of collaborating with local artisans and creating a product with Japanese heart, the Ki No Bi Gin bottle was inspired by karakami, a traditional method of pattern printing utilising carved woodblocks, founded in Kyoto. The bottle’s design was created by Kira Karacho, the oldest karakami atelier in Japan. Interestingly, it features plants and berries, in homage to the botanicals used in the gin.

What to Watch

As a small-batch artisanal gin distillery, Kyoto Distillery’s production is somewhat constrained both by its time-intensive distillation methods and the scarcity of certain ingredients (for example, its yuzu which is only harvested once year). Yet, interest in Ki No Bi Gin has only grown exponentially since its founding. In 2020, banking on the rise of Japanese craft gin,  Pernod Ricard acquired a stake in Ki No Bi Gin, with plans to build a new state-of-the-art distillery to meeting growing demand. As for how the involvement of a bigger spirits conglomerate and the new distillery may influence the artisanal production methods and consequently also the taste of Ki No Bi Gin, that remains to be seen.

(Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

But for now, operations at the original Kyoto Distillery continues to hum along, with an ever expanding range of core and limited releases that gin lovers can try. The staples thus far are as following:

• Ki No Bi: The original Kyoto dry gin, bottled at 45.7% ABV.
• Ki No Bi ‘Sei’: Made with the same distillation method as the original Ki No Bi, with the final blend recalibrated to a higher proof at 54.5% ABV.
• Ki No Tea: Made in collaboration with tea-grower Hori-Shichimeien, this gin is distilled from a number of super-premium Uji teas.

(Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

Over the years, the distillery has continued to wow with a number of special releases. Perhaps the most anticipated of the lot was the Ki No Bi Noh Series, which commemorated various Noh masks used by Kamisobe Noh, a theatre troupe in Japan. This series featured different bottlings of Ki No Bi gin aged in various casks. The Edition #17, for example, saw Ki No Bin Gin aged 6-12 months in three separate casks of esteemed origin prior to blending: Ex-Chichibu casks, Mizunara casks and ex-Sherry casks from the ghost distillery Karuizawa.

(Image Source: Ki No Bi Gin)

The cask experimentations and collaborations have since continued, with more recent releases like the Kyoto Dry Gin Amanoshidate Wine cask, featuring gin aged in ex-wine casks before being infused with navel oranges.

Our Take

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before people caught on to the fact that Japan’s bountiful fruit, herbs and florals were ripe for harnessing in the use of Gin. Yet, in many other ways from their early use of Japanese botanicals, Kyoto Distillery’s foray into the world of craft gin was truly ahead of the curve. From separate distillations of ingredient “Elements”, to the incorporation of Fushimi water to blend distillates before bottlings, much of how Ki No Bi is produced flipped the switch on standard gin production practices. Today, some of these techniques have been gradually adapted and replicated by other brands. 

With latest releases reflecting continued experimentation with exciting cask finishes and botanical blends, Kyoto Distillery seems to be moving from strength to strength. Plus, the latest investment by Pernod Ricard – a stamp of validation no doubt – further draws into questions what else one might anticipate from the distillery. No doubt, expectations are high. On our end, we are definitely excited to see what’s in store for Ki No Bi and how Kyoto Distillery may continue expanding the potentialities for gin production, not just in Japan but globally too.