During the course of the years, our travels have enabled us to meet interesting people, such as Yuko Yamamoto and Hiroshi Eguchi, the founders and owners of Mitosaya Botanical Distillery. We were fascinated with their story, their approach to distilling and running a business, their life and work connected to nature, their curiosity, willingness to experiment, and the beautiful, toned-down aesthetic intertwined with everything that they do. We have already visited some of Europe’s best distilleries, but this was unlike anything we’ve seen before- and we wanted to learn from them.
The distillery sits on the premises of the former lab for studying the properties of medicinal plants, in the middle of a botanical garden dating back to 1987. The garden is a wonder of its own, surrounded by the forest, with paths running between patches with various plants, from herbs to flowering bushes, flowers, and trees- each of them with a name tag; and two beautiful glasshouses. In the distillery, a lot of these herbs and flowers are used for macerations, resulting in peculiar distillates such as cinnamon, fennel, or wasabi.
Hiroshi was the last student of Christoph Keller of Stählemühle and Monkey 47 gin- and since Stählemühle is an institution that many serious distillers aspire to, it was too big of a chance to miss on it. A year of negotiations and planning with Hiroshi and Yuko and in April 2019, we found ourselves as apprentices at Mitosaya, living and working on the distillery grounds, in Chiba Prefecture, for almost a month. Our house was a wooden shed, with a wood-fired stove and huge windows opening up to the garden. From the shed, we could hear the sounds of birds in the morning and frogs in the evening, heavy raindrops on a rainy night- we were closer to the elements that we’ve been in a long time.
We came in the night, tired and shivering from a long trip, time difference, the newness of it all. There was warm soup, fish and rice, a filled hot tub, thick blankets on the beds- and a cold night. The next morning we slipped into Mitosaya schedule- it was open day at the distillery, a busy day when people from the surroundings, but mostly from Tokyo come to visit the distillery, taste the drinks, learn about the distillation process, plants, and macerations, and spend a couple of hours in the wonderful garden. We helped with the preparations, had our own booth to run and met many of Mitosaya friends and collaborators. We still keep in touch with most of them.
In the following weeks we got acquaintanced with most aspects of distillers work. Preparing the pears for fermentation, checking the fermentation and stirring regularly. Distilling banana and fennel brandies. Picking the cinnamon leaves, putting them for maceration, cutting them for tea. Measuring the barrels for Japanese customs. A malfunction of the still. Figuring out new bottling machine. Luka (whose previous occupation was electrical engineering) did some electrical work. Picking the botanicals from the garden. Going to Naeme farm to pick edible flowers, herbs and branches. Getting to know the quality ingredients, names of the edible flowers and herbs, their taste. Preparing them for drying, making tea blends. Packaging. Bottling.
Preparing for the Tokyo Cocktail 7 days event, where Mitosaya had its booth and the entire crew gathered to present the distillates. We made syrups in advance, picked branches in the woods, herbs, and flowers in the garden, learned how to prepare the cocktails from them, and how to present the drinks to a curious crowd. We never thought the daikon radish cocktail could be such a hit. Taking part in a big fashion store opening on Omotesando, also serving Mitosaya’s spirits.
Back in Mitosaya, eating together, every evening. Learning a lot about simple, healthy, natural food. A lot of soups and fermented goods. A lot of fish, some quality meat. Rice, rice in bamboo leaves, onigiri (rice balls filled with various fillings, such as sour plum or salmon). Sashimi with flowers and strawberries. Every dinner was a curious anticipation and a surprise. We cooked Croatian and Italian. When asked what do most of the Croatian families eat regularly, we said pork and potatoes. So they asked if we could make that. We made it our style, pork rolled in rosemary and fennel, potatoes baked in balsamic vinegar. There were pizza and lasagne nights (especially appreciated among children). There were visits to their local friends for dinner, with some more comforting Japanese food and lovely new connections.
Drinking together, also every evening. European wine, Stählemühle brandies, Japanese beer, new Mitosaya tastes. Going grocery shopping, picking their two daughters from school, and kindergarten. Playing with the girls despite the language barrier. Taking walks in the surrounding woods, driving an hour away just for buying sourdough bread, marveling at all the Japanese tools at the hardware store. Learning Japanese words (mostly food-related).
At the end of that period, our minds quivered with all the possibilities- the experiments, the creativity, the abundance of nature back at home. We knew we wanted to open a distillery, and couldn’t wait to start the process.
We still had a week left traveling to Hokkaido and then back to Tokyo. All fun, but with itchy feet to return home and apply what we have learned to our new work and our old everyday.
