Chichibu 8 Years Old 2015 Cask #12508 (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. The make is double distilled in copper pot stills built by Forsyths, from mostly unpeated barley, and matured on site in dunnage warehouses. Wide day to night temperature swings drive the wood interaction, which is why Chichibu reads older than its years suggest.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. By 8 years the spirit and oak have started to integrate, rougher notes softening as esters build into orchard and tropical fruit. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut. The palate leans on tropical and orchard fruit, mango and apple, with a clean cereal note beneath.

This bottling was distilled in 2015, from cask 12508 and bottled in 2023. It is a run of 274 bottles, released for France, bottled by La Maison du Whisky. It is the kind of single cask that built the distillery's reputation among collectors in barely more than a decade. Bottled at 62.8%, natural colour and not chill filtered. It remains one of the most collected names in modern Japanese whisky.