Quality & Craftsmanship
Our dedication to perfection is at the heart of our work at Suntory. Through our efforts to provide excellence in safety, reliability, and delight, we create new value and high-quality products that enrich the lives of our consumers.
Our quality policy, “all for the quality,” means that every stage from the very beginning of product development to the moment of consumption, must pursue the highest of standards.
Suntory is renowned for its whisky, but less well-known is our long history of distilling spirits. It begins with our founder, Shinjiro Torii, who made Hermes Gin, the first Suntory gin, in 1936. Shinjiro and his successors then continued to work to build a deep knowledge of distilling and blending techniques.
Roku is a harmonious blend of six botanicals that perfectly capture the essence of Japan’s four seasons.
Roku, which means ‘six’ in Japanese, owes its distinctive flavor to the six Japanese botanicals cultivated over four seasons: Sakura flower, Sakura leaf, Yuzu peel, Sencha tea (green tea), Gyokuro tea (refined green tea) and Sansho pepper.
In accordance with the Japanese tradition of Shun, each botanical is harvested at the peak of its season to extract the best flavor, then distilled separately to maintain individual characteristics. For instance, the delicate scent of the Sakura flower is drawn out in stainless pot stills through a vacuum distillation, whereas the deep flavor of Yuzu is achieved by distillation in copper pot stills.
Together with eight more traditional botanicals, the six carefully crafted extracts are blended by Japanese artisans to achieve Roku’s complex, yet harmonious flavor.
As a final flourish, Roku is presented in a hexagonal bottle with its key botanicals embossed on each if its six sides. The label is made of traditional washi paper and adorned with the Japanese kanji for ‘six’ in bold calligraphic strokes as a tribute to the Japanese craftsmanship distilled into every drop.