Chichibu Ichiro’s Malt – Heavily Peated 4 Years Old 2013

The Chichibu distillery was founded in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto, whose family had distilled at the closed Hanyu plant, and works on a small scale in the Saitama mountains. Water comes off the Arakawa river system, filtered through the surrounding mountains to a clean mineral balance that lets the fruit and oak show. The make is double distilled in copper pot stills built by Forsyths, from mostly unpeated barley, and matured on site in dunnage warehouses. The house style is clean and fruity from unpeated barley, which makes the peated bottlings a distinct strand rather than the norm.

This is peated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. At 4 years the spirit is in its extractive phase, pulling vanillin, oak lactones and colour quickly from the wood, which the basin's heat and cold drive harder than a cool maritime warehouse would. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut. This is heavily peated, the malt kilned hard, so phenols give thick ash and a medicinal smoke that sits over the sweetness. Past the medicinal smoke the spirit stays sweet and fruity, a balance of ash and stone fruit.

This bottling was distilled in 2013, from cask 2662 and bottled in 2017. It is a run of 217 bottles, released for Japan. Releases at this scale sell out quickly, which is part of why Chichibu has become one of the most traded distilleries in the world. Bottled at 62.9%, it rewards a drop of water to open the fruit.