Chichibu Ichiro’s Wine Wood Reserve

This is a Chichibu Wine Wood Reserve, a blended malt vatted from several of the distillery's own single malt casks rather than a single barrel. Chichibu, founded in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto in the Saitama mountains, works on a small scale, so even its vattings are drawn from a limited pool of casks. 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 malt is built around a range of wine casks, vatted to a consistent style. With no age statement it leans on the cask and the distillery's fast maturation, which gives more depth than the years would suggest. The wine casks give red and dark berry fruit with a light tannic grip. Chichibu's fruit led house character carries throughout, pear and honey balanced by a dry, oaky finish.

Bottled at 46%. The Wine Wood Reserve line shows how a chosen wood shapes the Chichibu spirit across several casks. Natural colour and not chill filtered. It remains one of the most collected names in modern Japanese whisky. Demand for the distillery's bottlings has long outpaced its small output.