Chichibu 7 Years Old 2014 Cask #3814 (LMDW)

Chichibu sits in a mountain basin in Saitama, northwest of Tokyo, where Ichiro Akuto fired the stills in 2008 under 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. Chichibu loses roughly three to five per cent of each cask a year to evaporation, near double the Scottish rate, so a young whisky here carries the depth of a much older one.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. Around 7 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. Underneath the wood, the make keeps its clean, fruity core, green apple and stone fruit with a light floral edge.

This bottling was distilled in 2014, from cask 3814 and bottled in 2021. It is a run of 212 bottles, released for France, bottled by La Maison du Whisky. It is the kind of single cask that built the distillery's reputation among collectors in barely more than a decade. At 63.9%, best read neat first, then opened with a little water.