Our ethos
The forest, bottled.
Minakami Mountain is named for a magical corner of Japan. High in the mountains of Minakami, in Gunma, melting snow on Mount Ōminakami becomes the very first trickle of the Tone River, which winds all the way to the Pacific. The valleys around it are a UNESCO biosphere reserve, full of hot springs, old forest and wild lilies. Every bottle we sell is made there, by hand, in the forest.
Closer to the source
The oils are distilled in the forest, over a wood fire, using mountain spring water, with as little electricity or gas as possible. The cedar leaves are gathered by hand from the surrounding hills.
It’s a slow, awkward way to work. Firewood has to be cut and split beforehand, and the temperature is hard to control. It doesn’t make the oil measurably better, and sometimes a batch is lost. The honest reason isn’t efficiency or sustainability. It’s a feeling: the closer the process gets to the way things were first done, the more life seems to be in the scent.
In ancient Egypt, perfumes and natural oils were offered to gods and kings. In ancient Greece, they were believed to clear the air. Had those people known distillation, they would have done it much like this: beautiful forest wood, clear spring water, fire. Recreating that imagined ancient oil is the idea behind everything Minakami Mountain makes.
It’s a method that can’t scale. So the still runs today, and again tomorrow.
Made for winding down
The blends are built around the end of the day: Oyasumi (“goodnight”), the Fly series, Woodland and Moon Time. Quiet, woody scents meant for the hour before sleep.
Unchanged, from the forest to you
We bring the oils and room sprays to Australia exactly as they leave Japan, packed there and shipped to our warehouse in Sydney. What’s in the bottle is exactly what leaves the forest.
About the creator
In the spring of 2016, Choshiro and a friend from his office days bought a cooking pot, some rubber seals and a length of silicone tube from the local hardware store and tried distilling for the first time, copying what they had seen. Standing in the forest, breathing that deep, clean air, they joked that if you could bottle the feeling and carry it around, you could relax the moment work got on your nerves.
The joke stuck. The pot became a proper still. The yields grew until there was enough oil to bottle. And Choshiro’s knowledge of the forest grew with it.
Asked why he bothers with fire and spring water when a gas burner would be easier, Choshiro admits it isn’t about sustainability. It’s a feeling he can’t fully explain, and he’d rather keep the feeling than the convenience.
He still gathers the cedar leaves himself, and still distils in the forest. Today, and again tomorrow.