Iseya Distillery Scarlet Caffe Amaro

26% ABV

PRE-ARRIVAL OFFER. Bottles available to ship/pick up by Wednesday, June 3rd.

Delightful Coffee Amaro from the masterful Tatsuya "Moto" Motonaga from the Iseya Distillery in Japan. Sort of tastes more like a delicious, botanical infused coffee liqueur to our palates as the bitterness is fairly soft. That said, the coffee aromas and flavors are stunning, fresh and precise. And the sweetness is fully restrained, with just enough to balance the bitterness of the coffee and botanicals. We can't wait to mix cocktails with this one as it's truly a stunner.

Producer Notes:

For Tetsuya Motonaga, Coffee being part of popular everyday culture was a revelation, and one that he wanted to incorporate into his award-winning Japanese Amari. Scarlet Caffé is a meditation on the delicate art of brewing coffee, viewed through the lens of a meticulously crafted amaro. Some 23 Carefully selected botanicals are combined with light roasted coffee beans from Ethiopia and a Panama Geisha from ACID COFFEE in Tokyo. Instead of macerating the beans with the botanicals in alcohol, Moto san prepares the coffee separately as a cold brew then blends it into the rest of this carefully macerated concoction. A complementary blend of brown and beet sugars are added before bottling resulting in a true wonder of a spirit. All the deep complexity of a skillfully made cold brewed coffee mingles with the delicate floral nuance that is the hallmark of Scarlet Amaro.

About Iseya Distillery:
Osaka-born Tatsuya Motonaga cut his teeth working at some of the most creative and botanically driven cocktail bars in Asia, including Tokyo’s Bar Benfiddich and WA-SHU in Taipei, Taiwan, before the events of 2020 necessitated a career shift. Drawing on his deep, long-held appreciation of amaro, Motonaga took it upon himself to travel across Europe, visiting over 70 distilleries in an effort to better understand the methodology and production techniques of some of the continent’s oldest producers of botanical spirits and liqueurs. Equipped with this centuries-old knowledge, Motonaga returned to Japan and in 2021 established the Iseya Distillery in a 100-year-old house located less than two kilometers from Lake Sagami.

The Iseya Distillery rents a neighboring farm that grows many of the botanicals used in the production of Scarlet liqueurs, all of which are farmed by Motonaga himself without pesticides and with minimal human intervention. Dried and fresh botanicals are macerated in stainless steel tanks using neutral spirit distilled from sugarcane, and the botanicals are organized either individually or in groups according to four categories: grasses and leaves, roots, woods and barks, and peels. The infusions are meticulously blended, sweetened using beet sugar, honey, or refined sugar depending on the expression,  and then rested in oak casks before being bottled, labeled, and waxed-sealed by hand.

Representing the first commercially packaged and exported Japanese amari, Scarlet has captured the hearts and minds of bartenders and spirits enthusiasts the world over with its expertly crafted range of both continuously produced and limited release bitters, establishing the fledgling brand as one of the most exciting new additions to the contemporary craft landscape.