Chichibu Ichiro’s Malt – Newborn – New Hogshead 2008

When Ichiro Akuto started Chichibu in 2008, he bottled some of the distillery's first distillate young, before it was old enough to be called whisky. This is one of those early releases, a new make spirit caught in its first months in wood rather than a matured single malt.

Because this is new make, only months in a new hogshead, it shows the Chichibu spirit at the start: clean and fruity, malty and bready with a green cereal edge, while the fresh oak has begun to lend its first vanilla and colour. At 62.9% it is raw and intense, a long way from the rounded house malt but a clear look at the spirit beneath it.

Filled in 2008 into a new hogshead, it is best read with water and curiosity, as a record of where a Chichibu whisky begins rather than where it ends. Cask strength, natural colour and not chill filtered. An early piece of the distillery's history from its founding year. It remains one of the most collected names in modern Japanese whisky. Demand for the distillery's bottlings has long outpaced its small output. It reflects the distillery's reputation for careful, small scale work.