Chichibu Ichiro’s Malt – Takashimaya Exclusive 2012

Chichibu is a small Saitama distillery started in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto, founder of Venture Whisky and heir to the Hanyu distilling family. 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. The basin climate swings from humid summers near 35 degrees to winters below freezing, so the casks expand and contract hard and the spirit takes on wood faster than it would in Scotland.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. With no age statement it rests entirely on the cask, where vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut, the fast Chichibu maturation giving more than the years would suggest. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut. The body is medium and the fruit clear, baked apple and citrus peel running into a warm, lightly spiced finish.

This bottling was distilled in 2012, from cask 1865. It is a run of 227 bottles, released for Belgium. Each cask is bottled on its own terms, a snapshot of how a particular wood shaped the Saitama spirit. Bottled at 62.1%, it rewards a drop of water to open the fruit.