Chichibu 10 Years Old 2014 Cask #11044 (Elixir)

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. Water comes off the Arakawa river system, filtered through the surrounding mountains to a clean mineral balance that lets the fruit and oak show.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. Ten years and more is a serious age for this distillery, the ellagitannins lending tannic structure and the esters now deep and layered. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut. Chichibu's fruit led house character carries throughout, pear and honey balanced by a dry, oaky finish.

This bottling was distilled in 2014, from cask 11044 and bottled in 2025. It is a run of 240 bottles, released for Belgium, bottled by Elixir Distillers. Each cask is bottled on its own terms, a snapshot of how a particular wood shaped the Saitama spirit. Bottled at 54.5%, it rewards a drop of water to open the fruit.