Chichibu 7 Years Old 2016 Cask #6179 (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. 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. 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.

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. 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 2016, from cask 6179 and bottled in 2024. It is a run of 161 bottles, released for France, bottled by La Maison du Whisky. From a distillery still in its first generation, bottlings like this show how far Chichibu has come in a short time. Bottled at 63.7%, natural colour and not chill filtered.