Matsui The Hakuto Gin (700 ml)

Matsui Shuzo, the Tottori-based house that built its reputation on whisky, turned its three Portuguese Charentais-style alambic pot stills toward gin — the same copper vessels used to produce the base neutral grain spirit for the Hakuto expression. The decision to use Charentais alambics rather than the column stills common to most Japanese craft gin producers yields a rounder, oil-retaining distillate that carries botanical weight without sharpness.

The distillery sits at the foothills of Mt. Daisen (1,729 m), an extinct volcano in Japan's least-populated prefecture. Volcanic rock naturally filters the deep-aquifer groundwater drawn for production, stripping hardness and imparting the soft, low-mineral character that defines the house style across every expression. 'Hakuto' (白兎) references the white rabbit of Tottori's founding myth and, more concretely, the Hakuto pear and white peach — the region's signature stone and pome fruits — which the botanical recipe is built around, though the full botanical bill remains undisclosed.

What separates Hakuto from the crowded field of Japanese craft gins is its explicit regional identity: rather than defaulting to yuzu or sakura as shorthand for 'Japaneseness,' the expression anchors itself in Tottori-specific agricultural produce, making it one of the few Japanese gins with a genuinely prefecture-specific botanical argument. Bottling ABV and chill-filtration status are not publicly confirmed by the producer.