Chichibu 7 Years Old 2015 Cask #4660 (LMDW)

Founded in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto, Chichibu has risen fast from a small mountain distillery to one of the most sought names in Japanese whisky. Water comes off the Arakawa river system, filtered through the surrounding mountains to a clean mineral balance that lets the fruit and oak show. 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. Most Chichibu is unpeated, so a peated release is a deliberate exception, the malt kilned over peat before it ever reaches the still.

This is peated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. At 7 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. Kilned with heavy peat, it carries dense phenolic smoke and ash, the fruit pushed beneath a tarry, medicinal weight. The smoke sits over a fruity core, the phenols and the orchard fruit trading places as it opens.

This bottling was distilled in 2015, from cask 4660 and bottled in 2022. It is a run of 215 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. At 63.9%, best read neat first, then opened with a little water.