To craft his rums, Yoshiharu Takeuchi uses kokuto, a brown sugar better known as Okinawa “black sugar”, sourced from Taramajima Island in the Okinawa archipelago. As with agricole-style rums, fermentations are triggered using carefully selected local yeasts, and run for around four days. Echoing the small batch also aged in Pedro Ximénez casks within the same Itinéraires catalogue, this single cask delivers extraordinary depth and definition. Alongside notes of lightly burnt dark cane sugar, its aromatic and flavour profile travels through mature, radiant lanes of medicinal, floral, fruity and honeyed complexity.
About the producer: Nine Leaves was a Japanese micro-distillery founded in 2013 by Yoshiharu Takeuchi in Ōtsu, Shiga Prefecture (near Lake Biwa). It became known for uncompromising craft, genuinely small batches, and a whisky-inspired approach—particularly in fermentation control and precise distillation. Takeuchi chose to close the distillery at the end of 2023, which has made the remaining releases especially sought-after.
Nose: Rich and deep. Medicinal (balm), chocolatey, gently spiced (cinnamon, ginger), verdant (sugarcane fields) and headily floral (tuberose, iris), the aromas keep rising in the glass. With aeration, blood orange, linden honey and woodland notes (mushroom, chestnut) take over.
Colour: Deep copper-orange.
Palate: Both lively and full-bodied. Fibrous (sugarcane), empyreumatic (ash, burnt wood) yet also fruity (date, fig) and honeyed (lavender), showing impressive concentration. Over time, marmalade, quince jelly and Bourbon vanilla compete in intensity.
Finish: Silky and unforced. Coated in a fine layer of salted butter caramel, it quickly shifts into especially suave tropical territory (mango, persimmon, guava). At this precise moment, the influence of Pedro Ximénez cask ageing reaches its zenith. Long afterwards, the empty glass reproduces in detail the medicinal, chocolatey and herbaceous character of the first nose.
