Region & History

Ask about gin in Kyoto, and you'll almost always end up at a building on the edge of the old town. There, in 2014, British-Japanese entrepreneur Noriko Kakuda Croll, her husband David Croll, and writer Marcin Miller founded The Kyoto Distillery. It's Japan's first craft gin distillery, and to this day, the only one in the city.

Gin was long an imported drink in Japan, sipped in Western-style bars, usually alongside whisky highballs. The three founders wanted something different: a gin made from Japanese ingredients and Japanese craftsmanship, distilled on-site. Their first gin, Ki No Bi, launched in 2016, its name referring to the artistry (bi) of the place (ki).

At the same time, something bigger was taking shape in Osaka. The beverage giant Suntory, founded in 1899 by Shinjiro Torii, released Roku, a gin from its Osaka distillery blending six Japanese botanicals tied to the four seasons. Kyoto relies on a small team and painstaking handwork; Osaka bets on scale and global shelf space.

The success of both houses sparked a boom within just a few years. Dozens of small distilleries across Japan began crafting gin with native botanicals, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. Still, connoisseurs regard Kyoto and Osaka as the two places where Japanese craft gin truly began.

Today, both houses represent two paths to the same destination. The small, visible workshop in Kyoto lets visitors watch the distilling process through glass. Osaka's industrial precision, meanwhile, puts Roku on supermarket shelves around the world.