Chichibu Ghost Series No. 12 10 Years Old 2009

Ichiro Akuto built Chichibu in 2008 in a landlocked basin in Saitama, carrying forward a distilling line that ran back through the lost Hanyu distillery. 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. Ten years and more is a serious age for this distillery, the ellagitannins lending tannic structure and the esters now deep and layered. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut. The spirit character stays fruit forward, apple and pear over a soft, malty body and a gentle spice.

This bottling was distilled in 2009, from cask 554 and bottled in 2019. It is a run of 157 bottles, released for Japan. Each cask is bottled on its own terms, a snapshot of how a particular wood shaped the Saitama spirit. Bottled at 61.9%, it rewards a drop of water to open the fruit.