Chichibu London Edition 2024

Chichibu is a small Saitama distillery started in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto, founder of Venture Whisky and heir to the Hanyu distilling family. 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 make is double distilled in copper pot stills built by Forsyths, from mostly unpeated barley, and matured on site in dunnage warehouses.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. Carrying no age statement, it leans on wood extraction, vanillin and oak lactones to the fore, with the basin climate pushing the spirit into the oak quickly. 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 release was drawn from the distillery's own stock and bottled in 2024. It is a run of 1920 bottles, released for Europe. It is the kind of single cask that built the distillery's reputation among collectors in barely more than a decade. Bottled at 50.5%, natural colour and not chill filtered.