Chichibu 2008 – Karenai Hana

Chichibu 2008 Karenai Hana is a single malt drawn from the distillery's founding vintage and bottled in 2019 at 64.9% cask strength for the Japanese market, produced by Venture Whisky at the Chichibu distillery in Saitama. The name, translating as flowers that never wither, gives this ten-year release from the 2008 vintage its own distinct identity within the broader programme of bottlings from that founding year.

Ten years in Ex-Bourbon casks at 64.9% represents one of the highest-strength expressions in the 2008 decade-mark series, the elevated ABV pointing to a particularly concentrated barrel. Without a single dominant flavour note in the data, the profile follows the house's typical Ex-Bourbon arc of orchard fruit, vanilla and caramel, here compressed and intensified by the undiluted cask-strength presentation. The non-single-cask designation suggests a small vatting of Ex-Bourbon barrels from the founding year bottled at natural strength.