Chichibu Ichiro’s Malt 8 Years Old 2014 (64%)

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. 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. 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. At 8 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. The palate leans on tropical and orchard fruit, mango and apple, with a clean cereal note beneath.

This bottling was distilled in 2014, from cask 3411 and bottled in 2022. It is a run of 175 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 64% it drinks well neat, with water settling the oak.