Hiroshi Eguchi, representative of the “mitosaya herbal garden distillery”, is a bookshop owner who turned distiller and moved with his family to Otaki Town, located in the center of the Boso Peninsula. Using fruit trees, medicinal herbs, and other ingredients from his herbal garden, as well as the bounty of producers across the country, he produces distilled spirits such as “eau de vie”, releasing around 40 different products each year. We take a closer look at how he makes them.
Making nature the inspiration
Otaki is a castle town located inland on the Boso Peninsula, surrounded by mountains. A five-minute drive from the center, where sake breweries and long-established shops line the streets, is an area where public facilities such as a baseball field and a library are concentrated. It is a very ordinary scene that could be found in any town, but if you slip past the side of the square and go to the back of the site, the green of the trees suddenly deepens and you are enveloped in a dignified atmosphere. Nestled in this lush forest is the Mitosaya Herb Garden Distillery.
“Mitosaya” means “fruit and pods”
Mitosaya has renovated the site of a former prefectural herbal garden and produces distilled alcohol such as “eau de vie” made from plants grown on the premises and fruits delivered from all over Japan. In French, eau de vie literally translates to “water of life” and in the narrow sense refers to distilled alcohol made mainly from fruit, but Mitosaya has produced 180 types of products to date, including various distilled alcohol, fruit tea, and sauces, without being bound by such a narrow definition.
Their manufacturing stance is to look at the entire process of a plant from seed to fruition and decay, and to “give shape to small discoveries from nature.” For this reason, Eguchi is inspired not only by “fruit” but also by materials that would normally be thrown away, such as “pods.” For example, they developed “134 Petit ORANGE” using orange peels after squeezing them to make juice at a cafe in Ginza. Petit ORANGE brings out the complex and sweet aroma of oranges, and has a clear aftertaste that makes it hard to believe that it has an alcohol content of 44%.
Even if the raw material used is peel, which is not commonly used, if the original fruit is high quality, there is a chance that the flavor can be brought out in the distilled spirit. Eguchi has a knack for focusing on such things. The two words “fruit” (fruit) and “pod” (pods) express his attitude of looking at nature as a whole, his humility and inquisitiveness towards plants, and so he named the distillery “mitosaya.”
A herb garden like a botanical encyclopedia
“We have two greenhouses on the 16,000m2 site, and a building we use as a distillery,” says Eguchi, showing us around the herb garden. Hundreds of species of medicinal plants, herbs, and fruit trees are planted in separate areas, making it seem like a realistic botanical guide. Beekeeping is also practiced, and on warm days, bees fly around in search of nectar. There is a bar counter in the greenhouse, and the plant specimens displayed behind it from the time when the garden was run by the prefecture quietly tell the history of this place.
From Bookshop to Distiller
Eguchi originally ran a bookshop called Utrecht in Tokyo, but as he selected books that interested him, he recalls, “I gradually found more books about people working in nature and books rooted in life and food.” Having grown up in the countryside as a child, he became more conscious of places close to nature and life with his family. “I wanted to have some skill in order to integrate my work and life and create things in nature.” While pondering this idea, he learned about the technique of “distillation.”
Eguchi came across an interview with German distiller Christoph Keller and became interested in his work. As Keller, who was also the former president of a publishing company, handled Keller’s publications in Utrecht, he visited Keller’s distillery, Stahlemühle, in southern Germany in 2015 and began learning distillation techniques from Keller. Keller was a man who continued to innovate the world of traditional fruit brandy and herbal spirits by taking advantage of the rich natural environment on the distillery grounds. “I started mitosaya because I wanted to use what I learned and felt here with Japanese fruits and plants.”
An encounter with a closed public herb garden
The following year, Eguchi returned to Japan and immediately went around the country searching for a suitable site for a distillery, but the search was difficult. Even in areas blessed with a natural environment, it was difficult to find a satisfactory location that “evoked a story.”
They eventually found the site of a former herb garden. The site was the Chiba Prefectural Herb Garden, established in 1987, and operated with the aim of spreading knowledge of medicinal plants. It was later transferred to Otaki Town and closed at the end of 2015. There, a wide variety of plants and fruits that are used to make distilled spirits grew, and above all, there was “a herb garden that has been cultivated for 40 years, a story that can’t be found anywhere else.”
Eguchi and his team rented the site of the former herb garden from Otaki Town, renovated the facility, and obtained a liquor production license for the distillery in 2018.
A sense of bringing out the charm of nature
The still used at mitosaya is a German-made one manufactured about 40 years ago, with a small capacity of 150 liters. Rather than mass-producing one thing, this scale is just right for mitosaya’s distillation style, which is to flexibly prepare a diverse lineup of individual items. In the brewing process, which precedes distillation, the brewing method is not uniform, such as trying to brew in wooden barrels and changing yeast depending on the ingredients. “We don’t do anything that follows theory,” says Eguchi, laughing, and his attitude seems to be not limited to the simple framework of product manufacturing, but rather to enjoy “experimenting” every day.
“The first step in the process is the fermentation technique of brewing, which turns the sugar in the ingredients into alcohol, and distillation is like concentrating it. The water is evaporated with heat to increase the alcohol content, and the aroma of the ingredients contained in the alcohol is extracted. I think that a person’s sense comes into play in this.”
In terms of sense, Eguchi’s unique sensibility shines through in the eau-de-vie brewed with figs. After distillation, water is usually added to adjust the alcohol content, but instead of water, Eguchi’s wife, Yamamoto Yuko, adds tea made from fermented fig leaves, resulting in an eau-de-vie that truly embodies the origin of the name mitosaya, which is “enjoy the aroma of figs from both the fruit and the leaves.” This “178 FIG INTIMATE” has been a beloved staple product brewed every year since mitosaya opened.
Distilled spirits for a variety of occasions
In 2024, together with Okinawa’s Hoshinoya Taketomi Island, they will produce “KUNUSHINA,” a distilled liquor made from the medicinal herb “Nuchigusa” harvested on Taketomi Island. Their activities are remarkable, including the presentation of “YUYU,” a medicinal herb liquor created in collaboration with mitosaya and Noma, at the pop-up “Noma Kyoto” of the Danish restaurant “Noma.” “Recently, I’ve been feeling the joy of making things with various people,” says Eguchi.
Their eyes are also on Chiba Prefecture, nearby, and they are putting effort into the “Chiba Series,” which includes the creation of distilled liquor made from peanuts from Otaki Town, dried sweet potatoes from the neighboring town of Mutsuzawa, and pears that are a specialty of Isumi City. “I think that if we do things that we enjoy like this, we might have a positive impact on the surrounding area. Otaki is in an inconvenient place, but we are living in an age where inconvenience can also be valuable.”
The medicinal herb garden itself has also been given new attention, and the garden has been opened every Friday and Saturday instead of once every few months. A shop called “YA” has also been opened on the premises. More visitors than ever before can now directly experience the charms of the local nature and distilled spirits. “I would like to see more people enjoying distilled spirits on the dinner table at home. I think it would be great to have this kind of alcohol to enjoy a leisurely conversation with close friends,” says Eguchi with confidence. Eguchi has always condensed new sensibilities into his products while interacting with the nature and people of various regions. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for him.
