Chichibu Ichiro’s Malt – The Peated 3 Years Old 2010

In the Saitama mountains northwest of Tokyo, Chichibu has made malt whisky since 2008 under Ichiro Akuto and his Venture Whisky company. The make is double distilled in copper pot stills built by Forsyths, from mostly unpeated barley, and matured on site in dunnage warehouses. Wide day to night temperature swings drive the wood interaction, which is why Chichibu reads older than its years suggest. Most Chichibu is unpeated, so a peated release is a deliberate exception, the malt kilned over peat before it ever reaches the still.

This is peated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak and finished in a port pipe. 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, while the port gives red fruit and a sweet fig note. The malt was kilned over peat, so phenols give a firm medicinal smoke and ash over the fruit. The smoke sits over a fruity core, the phenols and the orchard fruit trading places as it opens.

This bottling was distilled in 2010 and bottled in 2013. It is a run of 6700 bottles. Each cask is bottled on its own terms, a snapshot of how a particular wood shaped the Saitama spirit. At 53.5% it drinks well neat, with water settling the oak.