"Juniper is the first botanical to reach the nose, though earthy, citrusy sansho is present, given levity by the sweet orange.
The gin has an interesting flavour journey; the sweet botanicals envelop the tongue, with liquorice making itself very well known. The sansho comes in with a warming spice, but that is quickly side swiped by candied orange and lemon citrus. Fire dances at the back of the sip, with the sansho coating the mouth in pepper.
That said, those with a spice phobia shouldn’t avoid this gin. Juniper is present throughout the journey and the orange and lemon bring a real lightness. The finish is lasting, though hard to define – none of the botanicals particularly shout, instead a complex and aromatic taste settles in the mouth.
Tonic heightens the citrus, hushing the brine and spice of the sansho and bringing out a hint of lemon. We’d continue playing with that theme when hunting for a G&T garnish, adding in yuzu if accessible and mandarin if not.
It is packaged in frosted glass, in a tall, wide bottle with Japanese calligraphy (the Hiragana for Kokoro) dominating the front. Keeping to the Japanese theme, the bottle is clean and uncluttered, though a couple of short paragraphs telling the story of Uncle Nic feature on the back of the bottle. Everything is embossed, bar the neck sticker, which features Japanese characters that translate to ‘heart of the forest.’"
--------THE PRODUCER--------
Thames Distillery
The story begins in the 1960s, when Uncle Nic made his way to Japan and ended up fronting several nature programmes. He made something of a name for himself there, and in the 1980s was paid to front an advert for Nikka Whisky. He used his fee to buy a house up in the Japanese Alps where he – as a nature lover – was dismayed by the state of the surrounding forests, which were dying following years of over planting and mismanagement.
His course of action was to buy as much of the woodland as he could and donate it to the Afan Woodland Trust which has worked with him over the past three decades to bring the area back to life. The woods are now flourishing, and home to over 50 endangered species.
It was on a visit to the Alpine home that James and his brother-in-law and Kokoro Gin co-founder, Barry Darnell, decided to make a Japanese inspired gin.
When they got to Japan, Uncle Nic took them for a walk in the woods – he introduced them to the sansho berries growing in the vicinity (“you pick a few off the bush and eat them and there’s this intense explosion of flavour, almost like an electric current over the tongue” James told us) and encouraged them to drink water from a mountain stream, which took on a whole new glacial freshness when teamed up with the sansho taste.
James returned to the UK and began experimenting with the berries. Though he had no previous distilling experience, he took to the role with gusto, armed with just a self-customised 20-litre stove top still and an A-level in Chemistry.
He soon realised that only fresh berries retain that unique, mountain-air zing, so abandoned any notion of using imported dried berries. Instead, Uncle Nic and a handful of locals from the nearest town, Kurohime, pick them from the Afan Woods. The work is hugely labour intensive, as once the berries have been plucked they need to be transported and cleaned of their stems before being bagged up and frozen.
To create their gin – one that would carry the flavour of the sansho without letting it entirely dominate the taste – the duo turned to Charles Maxwell of Thames Distillers. He has been distilling for forty years and has an incredible knowledge of the relationships between botanicals, so – working to James’s notes – he was able to form the recipe after just a couple of trial distillations.
The botanicals forming the final line up are juniper, coriander, angelica, sweet orange, almond, liquorice, savory, lemon peel and sansho berries. The botanicals and spirit are loaded into Thames’ 500-litre John Dore still and left to macerate overnight. Once the still is switched on, the run takes around five hours.
The gin is made to concentrate, so once this comes off the still (at around 80% ABV), it is blended with further neutral spirit before being cut down to its bottling strength of 42%.
