Seven years in three 300-litre ex-Armagnac casks shapes this 2018 Nine Leaves small batch. Made in Japan from black sugar, or kokuto, the rum was bottled at 59% ABV with an outturn of 923 bottles.

Compared with the five-year-old PX edition, the maturation here is longer and built around Armagnac-seasoned wood. Those casks, previously used for French grape brandy, give the Japanese black-sugar spirit a clearly different frame.

The 923-bottle outturn preserves the small-batch scale while allowing the three casks to be composed together. That three-cask structure remains central to the bottling's identity.