Iejima, Santa Maria Gold, Rum, 700ml

Iejima is one of the smaller islands of the Ryukyu archipelago and, until recently, was not very attractive to tourists or spirits enthusiasts. This changed in 2011. Since the early 2000s, Asahi, the renowned Japanese beer company, had been producing bioethanol from sugarcane, which had long been cultivated on the island. The plant closed in 2008, but a few years later, an Awamori producer discovered that the island actually had everything needed for rum production! Only fresh sugarcane juice and minimal intervention during the distillation process are the basis for these wonderful products.