Chichibu Elements 8 Years Old 2014

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 distillery ferments in washbacks built from Japanese mizunara oak, where native lactobacilli add fruit and a light incense note to the wash. 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 a stout beer cask. Around 8 years in, the fruit esters and the wood have married, and the accelerated ageing gives a depth a Scottish whisky might reach much later. The cask adds roasted malt and a cocoa note. The spirit character stays fruit forward, apple and pear over a soft, malty body and a gentle spice.

This bottling was distilled in 2014, from cask 11037 and bottled in 2022. It is released for Italy. From a distillery still in its first generation, bottlings like this show how far Chichibu has come in a short time. Bottled at 61.3%, it rewards a drop of water to open the fruit. It remains one of the most collected names in modern Japanese whisky.