Chichibu Ichiro’s Malt – Chichibu Edition 2019 9 Years Old 2009

In the Saitama mountains northwest of Tokyo, Chichibu has made malt whisky since 2008 under Ichiro Akuto and his Venture Whisky company. Production is small, around a third of a million litres a year, with floor malting done by hand on occasion and every stage run under one roof. The distillery ferments in washbacks built from Japanese mizunara oak, where native lactobacilli add fruit and a light incense note to the wash.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak and finished in a rum cask. Around 9 years in, the fruit esters and the wood have married, and the accelerated ageing gives a depth a Scottish whisky might reach much later. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut, while the rum gives brown sugar and a tropical banana note. The body is medium and the fruit clear, baked apple and citrus peel running into a warm, lightly spiced finish.

This bottling was distilled in 2009, from cask 5821 and bottled in 2018. It is a run of 622 bottles. From a distillery still in its first generation, bottlings like this show how far Chichibu has come in a short time. Bottled at 60.4%, it rewards a drop of water to open the fruit.