Kokuto De Lequio Yambaru Spiced Rum

Kokuto De Lequio is an Okinawan rum made by Mizuho Shuzo in Naha, and everything about it is rooted in the islands. The base is 100% kokuto, the unrefined Okinawan black cane sugar, fermented with a proprietary yeast cultivated from local sugarcane fields. The wash is double distilled in stainless steel pot stills, then the Yambaru botanicals go in for a third distillation in a copper hybrid still. Those botanicals are all Okinawan: shikuwasa, the island's small tart lime; getto, Okinawan shell ginger; and pipachi, the local long pepper. The name refers to Yambaru, the forested north of Okinawa's main island. It's bottled at 43% ABV in a 500ml bottle. This is spiced rum in a very different sense from the vanilla-heavy American style, and it sits somewhere between gin and rum. The published tasting notes describe a nose of lemon-and-lime soda, sansho peppercorn and honeysuckle, and a citrusy, floral palate of lime peel, jasmine, umeboshi, green papaya, sweet-tart candy and juniper berry. That profile makes it unusually versatile: it's excellent with tonic, as you'd use a gin, and it makes a bright, aromatic Daiquiri. It's also worth tasting neat to get the kokuto sugar underneath the botanicals.

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