Chichibu The Single Cask Peated 6 Years Old 2012

The Chichibu distillery was founded in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto, whose family had distilled at the closed Hanyu plant, and works on a small scale in the Saitama mountains. Wide day to night temperature swings drive the wood interaction, which is why Chichibu reads older than its years suggest. The basin climate swings from humid summers near 35 degrees to winters below freezing, so the casks expand and contract hard and the spirit takes on wood faster than it would in Scotland. The house style is clean and fruity from unpeated barley, which makes the peated bottlings a distinct strand rather than the norm.

This is peated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. At 6 years, helped by an angel's share near double Scotland's, the make tastes older than it is, the esters rounding into stone fruit and the oak settling. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut. Peat in the malting adds phenols, reading as wood smoke and a light medicinal note above the orchard fruit. Beneath the smoke the Chichibu fruit holds on, apple and honey rising against the ash on the finish.

This bottling was distilled in 2012, from cask 2077 and bottled in 2018. It is a run of 356 bottles, released for Japan. From a distillery still in its first generation, bottlings like this show how far Chichibu has come in a short time. At 61.8% it drinks well neat, with water settling the oak.