Tosayama Ginger Ale / 土佐山ジンジャーエール

Tosayama Ginger Ale / 土佐山ジンジャーエール

A friend of mine transferred to Kochi prefecture from Tokyo said Tosayama Ginger Ale is really good so I searched the ginger ale.
Kochi is in Shikoku, which is south of Honshu and east of Kyushu, and it's Japan's largest producer of ginger.

Tosayama Ginger Ale is made in Kochi pref. and its remarkable point is they use JAS-certified organic gingers.


I bought a trial set which contains 2 types of ginger ales 3 bottles each.
01 Premium: dry ginger ale
02 Mild: milder and sweeter

In the box, there're several brochures about this product and also organic gingers.
According to the brochure, they also use headwaters of Kagamigawa river, one of the 100 best waters in Japan, and organic yuzu juice, hot pepper, and domestically-produced honey.


01 Premium;  A plentiful amount of organic gingers with spicy hot pepper.
02 Mild; Uses domestic honey as a secret flavor to give milder and sweeter taste.

Drink this ginger ale straight cold is of course good, and mix with red wine, beer, shochu, and vodka would be great, too.

Besides the flavor and ideas of the product, they mention how they grow the gingers.

The process written was 9 steps.
1. BM farming methods
The basic to produce safe and secure food is the soil, so they use BM compost.

2. Plowing
They start plowing the soil from winter and plant in the dirt.

3. Put up a net
Kochi is hit by typhoons so to protect the infant cane, they cover up the area.

4. Removing bugs
By hand, they remove bugs from plants.
This affects crop yields a lot.

5. Health check-up
They check the soil and the growing condition to fertilize earth.

6. Growth
Despite of the rain, wind, bugs, or heat of the summer, the gingers grow well.

7. Harvest
Before frosting, they start cropping at once.
The amount of the harvest won't reach that of common farming since they never used any agrichemicals or chemical fertilizer to produce this JAS-certified gingers.

8. Store
They store the gingers in pots which keeps certain temperature and humidity.
Once they surface changes into amber color, they ship them out.

9. Completion
Ginger has been used as Kampo for many years.

I tried "02 Mild" first.


As it contains honey, it had sweet taste and flavor in it.

However, you can see ginger sediments at the bottom, it made my throat slightly warm after I drank it.












Then I tried "01 Premium" afterward.

This ginger ale also had sullage of ginger.

It doesn't contain honey and that made me notice yuzu flavor more (02 Mild also uses yuzu, too).

One sip made my throat and stomach hot. 
There's another package design; dots version.)



This Tosayama Ginger Ale was totally different from the ones I've tried.
It's not only dry (spicy), but also you can actually taste the real ginger fragrance and taste.
And both made me feel warm and the soda bubble wasn't hurting my throat at all.
These bottle could be an adequate drink when you got a cold.