Chichibu Ichiro’s Malt – The Floor Malted 3 Years Old 2009

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. Chichibu loses roughly three to five per cent of each cask a year to evaporation, near double the Scottish rate, so a young whisky here carries the depth of a much older one. The distillery ferments in washbacks built from Japanese mizunara oak, where native lactobacilli add fruit and a light incense note to the wash.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. At 3 years the wood is still giving up its first sugars and spice, vanillin reading as vanilla, with the sharp seasonal swings speeding the exchange. 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 2009 and bottled in 2012. It is a run of 8800 bottles. Each cask is bottled on its own terms, a snapshot of how a particular wood shaped the Saitama spirit. At 50.5% it drinks well neat, with water settling the oak.