Iki sits in the strait between Kyushu and the Korean peninsula, on an old trading route, and distillation technique arrived here from China by that road. It met the island's grain farming and produced a barley shochu, which is why Iki is described as where barley shochu began.

The name comes with conditions. Single distillation. Production on the island. And a specific ratio in the mash: one part rice koji to two parts barley. Get any of those wrong and the liquid may be excellent and may be from Iki, but it is not Iki shochu in the protected sense.

The designation came in 1995, the same year as Kuma shochu and Ryukyu awamori. Satsuma followed a decade later. These were among the earliest geographical indications granted for spirits in Japan, and they rest on the WTO agreement on intellectual property, which means the island's name is defended outside the country as well as inside it.

That is the part I keep turning over. A small island in a strait, forty square miles of barley and water, holding a name that an international treaty is obliged to protect. The distance between the scale of the place and the scale of the machinery around its name is considerable.