Becoming Fluent in Shochu, Japan’s Answer to Vodka

Shochu, quite simply, is a flavorful, aromatic, usually clear distilled spirit with a rather low alcohol content: around 25 percent by volume, or 50 proof. “It’s like Japanese vodka.

That’s how I sometimes tell people to think of it,” says Andrew Stover, sommelier at Sei in Penn Quarter. The restaurant and lounge carries about 20 shochus, one of the region’s largest selections.

Of course, shochu is lighter than vodka’s usual 80 proof. Like vodka, it can be produced in many ways, and many people are doing so, with more than 600 shochu distilleries in Japan. Shochus can be made from five base ingredients: mugi (barley), satsumaimo (sweet potato), kome (rice), soba (Japanese buckwheat) and kokuto (brown sugar). Before shochu is distilled, its production process is similar to that of sake in that koji, or mold spores, are used to start fermentation. The type of koji is another major factor in shochu’s taste, and there are three: White koji creates a fruitier and gentler spirit, black koji creates a more robust taste, and yellow koji is somewhere in between.

The highest-quality shochu, called honkaku (“authentic”), is single-distilled. In fact, the single distillation, at very low proof, is really what gives shochu its unique aromas and flavors. Once you start distilling shochu more than one time, it becomes . . . well, like vodka.

Overall, shochu provides an incredibly subtle taste experience. My favorites were the barley shochus, which I felt best balanced robust flavor with the fruit and floral aromas: in particular, the racy Iichiko “Kurobin” (around $50) and the mellow Gokoo “Comfortable Sky” ($40), which is aged in oak barrels for three years and had a whiskeylike profile.

Sweet potato shochu, in particular, rose to popularity in Japan in the past decade, triggering a shortage of sweet potatoes in that country. The most coveted sweet potato shochus come from Satsuma, a district in Kagoshima considered the historic home of shochu, dating to the 16th century. From Sei’s list, I enjoyed an expression of sweet-potato shochu called Satsuma Shiranami ($35), which was bold and pungent with a touch of sweet, and fiery around the edges.

Another favorite was a rice shochu called Hakushika “Naka Naka Nai” ($35 per 750 ml), which means something like “very limited.” It is aged in cedar casks and has wonderful white-pepper notes. I also tasted a fascinating brown-sugar shochu produced in Japan’s Amami Islands. Sei carries one example of this type, and it tastes a lot like a low-proof cachaca, the Brazilian cane spirit. In fact, the restaurant sometimes substitutes it for cachaca in a drink called a Japanese caipirinha.