Japan Eats

Our guest is Marcin Miller who is the founding partner of the Kyoto Distillery in Japan. The distillery is the maker of the award-winning beautiful Japanese-style craft gin called KI NO BI. Before he co-founded the Kyoto Distillery in 2014, Marcin has been in the spirits industry for a long time as a writer, importer, distributor and consultant. Until very recently, no one would have expected that Japanese-made gin would become popular nationally as well as globally, but the Kyoto Distillery initiated the current Japanese gin boom. Marcin and his business partners David and Noriko Croll launched KI NO BI in October 2016 and popular brands like Roku, Sui, Nikka Coffey and other craft labels quickly followed. As a result, in 2020, the sales of Japanese gin exceeded those of imported brands in the country.In this episode, we will discuss why the British spirit writer ended up starting a distillery in Kyoto, what is special about Japanese-style gin, why the terroir of Kyoto can produce a unique gin, the latest an