Suntory Roku Sakura Bloom Japanese Craft Gin (700 ml)

Roku — Japanese for 'six' — takes its name from the deliberate decision to distill each of its six Japanese botanicals separately, in the vessel best suited to its character, before blending with eight classic gin botanicals including juniper and coriander. That choice of individual distillation, rather than a single combined maceration, is the technical spine of the entire expression.

The six Japanese botanicals — sakura flower, sakura leaf, yuzu peel, sencha green tea, gyokuro tea, and sansho pepper — are each harvested at peak season and processed in isolation: delicate florals in pot stills, tougher botanicals in different vessels, preserving aromatic integrity that a combined maceration would blur. Sansho pepper, the Japanese relative of Sichuan pepper, contributes a citrus-forward tingle distinct from the heat of black pepper. Gyokuro, Japan's most shade-grown tea grade, adds a deep umami-vegetal register absent from any European gin.

What makes Roku categorically unusual is the sakura leaf component — cherry blossom leaf carries a coumarin-adjacent, almost almond-skin quality that no classic London Dry botanical list approaches. The result sits outside the London Dry framework entirely: lower juniper dominance, a structural mid-palate of green tea tannin, and a sansho finish that pulses rather than fades. Bottled at 43% ABV; the Sakura Bloom edition foregrounds the floral sakura register above the standard Roku baseline.