One afternoon in February 1891, a Japanese chemist named Jokichi Takamine arrived by train in Peoria, Ill. He was there at the invitation of the Distilling and Cattle Feeding Company, by far the largest spirits producer in America at the time, and he came bearing a potentially revolutionary way of making whiskey, using a type of mold called koji to kick-start fermentation.
His process, which replaced the malting technique typically used by Western distillers, promised to increase yields by 10 percent or more, making the distillers, and him, millions of dollars.
But the company, commonly known as the Whiskey Trust, was plagued by corruption and collapsed before he could start production. Dr. Takamine, and the Takamine process, were largely forgotten.
Recently, though, a number of koji-based whiskeys have begun to appear on liquor store shelves and high-end back bars in the United States, this time not for the sake of efficiency but for flavor: The process creates a spirit poised between savory richness and elegant floral notes, unmistakably whiskey but at the same time utterly unique.
“Koji whiskey is soft on the palate, without the oiliness of a traditional whiskey, and it has a mellow finish,” said Mike Vacheresse, an owner of Travel Bar in Brooklyn, which serves several koji-based spirits.
Among the newcomers is a whiskey called, appropriately, Takamine, which is distilled in Japan in collaboration with Honkaku Spirits, a Long Island-based importer that specializes in koji-based liquors.
“There’s an umami quotient to it that is not present in a lot of malt whiskey,” said Christopher Pellegrini, who started Honkaku in 2020 to import shochu, an unaged koji spirit. Among its partners in Japan was a small distillery on the southern island of Kyushu called Shinozaki, whose owner, Hiroyuki Shinozaki, had already spent years tinkering with the Takamine process.
In order for grain to ferment, a distiller first has to convert its starch into sugar. In the European tradition, that is typically done by letting the grains germinate just enough to create an enzyme that will start the conversion, a step called malting.
Japanese producers achieve the same end by inoculating their grains — usually rice — with koji mold, which works faster and more efficiently than malting. Yeast cells then eat the sugar and release alcohol as a byproduct. Very roughly speaking, the result is sake; if it is then distilled, you get shochu.
Dr. Takamine, who was born into a samurai family in Japan in 1854 and moved to the United States at the urging of his American wife, was far from the first to use koji mold. Various types of koji have long been a staple method for making spirits like shochu and sake, as well as nonalcoholic products like soy sauce and miso. Koji is so pervasive in Japanese culture that people call it “the national fungus.”
Dr. Takamine’s insight was to apply traditional koji methods to making corn whiskey. More than a century later, Mr. Shinozaki and his son, Michiaki, decided to follow his lead, this time using barley and a barley-specific mold, as well as aging it in a barrel.
But there was a problem: Japanese rules hold that the resulting product cannot be called whiskey, which they say must be made with malted barley; and because it is barrel-aged, it can’t be called shochu either (aged shochu must be filtered to remove color). So distillers like Mr. Shinozaki had to find importers like Honkaku who could sell it in markets like the United States, where the rules are looser.
Chris Uhde, a vice president of the whiskey importer ImpEx, first encountered koji-based whiskey in 2014, when a friend brought a sample to his house in Los Angeles. “It was like what I knew, but it was an expansion beyond that,” he said. “It was fun and different.”
Today Mr. Uhde and ImpEx work with two Japanese distilleries, Fukano and Ohishi, to create a portfolio of koji-based whiskeys, each with its own distinct profile. Fukano Blonde is fruity and floral, while Ohishi, often aged in used sherry barrels, offers notes of plum and chocolate.
ImpEx began importing those whiskeys to the United States in 2017, and at first it was slow going. Koji-based whiskey seemed dauntingly unfamiliar to all but the most adventurous drinkers, while purists claimed it wasn’t even whiskey.
That eventually changed, Mr. Uhde said, especially as Americans’ interest in Japanese whiskey has grown to a mania over the last decade.
“I’m old enough to remember when I.P.A.s were first launched, and people said, ‘Oh, that’s weird and wild and different,’” he said. “And then it slowly came into its own.”
Honkaku began importing and selling Takamine whiskey in 2021, and it is now available in 25 states. Mr. Pellegrini and his brand ambassador, Stephen Lyman, said their shipments have been selling out, and that the Shinozaki distillery is investing in new equipment to meet demand.
The standard Takamine is aged for eight years, though some limited, one-time releases have been aged up to 26 years. Every spring, timed to the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, Honkaku releases a whiskey partly aged in barrels made in part with cherry wood, giving it notes of stone fruit and fresh flowers.
The timing is more than just a nod to U.S.-Japanese relations. After his whiskey project failed, Dr. Takamine pivoted to medical research, and in 1903 he patented a process to isolate adrenaline (today known as epinephrine), which he then licensed to the American pharmaceutical company Parke-Davis.
The license, which also granted him the rights to sell his product in Japan, made him a fortune. In 1912 he paid for the mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, to send more than 3,000 cherry trees to Washington, the first to be planted around the Tidal Basin.
Dr. Takamine settled in New York City, where he died in 1922, at 67. By then the story of his koji whiskey was fast fading into history. Today he is remembered, if at all, for his work on adrenaline — a fact that Mr. Pellegrini hopes will soon change.
“Once you have enough koji whiskey, you start to miss it in other whiskeys,” he said. “You sort of feel like there’s something lacking.”
