Unique Taste Matured in Yakushima Cedarwood

Yakushima lies across the Osumi Strait from Komaki Distillery, in Satsuma town, Kagoshima Prefecture. The island is well-known as Japan’s joint-first World Natural Heritage Site, registered in 1993, together with the Shirakami Mountains.

Yakushima’s hinterland is entirely composed of mountains, with elevations up to 2000 meters. Its sea-board villages enjoy an average temperature of some 20 degrees, making them subtropical, but the mountains can drop to subarctic cold. Warm Kuroshio currents pass the island, generating incessant rain everywhere, and Yakushima has far more rainy days than clear ones. These climatic conditions foster a special natural environment with its own eco-system.

The most extraordinary feature of the island is the Yakusugi (Yakushima cedar trees). Forests contain specimens over 1,000 years old, and two of the most ancient are nicknamed Jomon-sugi (from the Jomon Period, 14,000 – 300 BCE) and Kigen-sugi. (meaning ‘Year 1 CE’). To spend quiet time among these trees is to imagine yourself back in the Earth’s primordial age.

Yakushima cedars grow on solid rock, meaning their roots spread wide to withstand severe wind and rain. Slow, steady growth results in intricate wood grains. Cedars are legally protected and logging is not permitted, but they were once used as building materials, admired for their robustness and highly antibacterial quality.

Yakushima cedars felled but left unused since the Edo Period are known as ‘earth-buried trees’ (domaiboku), and they may be used. The Komaki Distillery entered into close collaboration with one of the studios in charge of this material to select precious quality items to make into whisky barrels. It was the first time a whisky has ever been matured this way.

The Yakushima cedarwood contributes special characteristics to both maturity and flavour. Komaki aims for a flamboyant whisky with deep and complex taste.

Text: Hisashi Ikai / Photo: Yoshikazu Shiraki