Chichibu London Edition 2018 Ichiro’s Malt (TWE)

Ichiro Akuto built Chichibu in 2008 in a landlocked basin in Saitama, carrying forward a distilling line that ran back through the lost Hanyu distillery. 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. Water comes off the Arakawa river system, filtered through the surrounding mountains to a clean mineral balance that lets the fruit and oak show.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. Without an age statement the cask does the talking, esters and vanillin building fruit and vanilla over a young but quickly matured spirit. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut. On the palate the Chichibu signature shows through: bright orchard fruit, a clean citrus lift and a thread of wildflower honey.

This release was drawn from the distillery's own stock and bottled in 2018. It is a run of 929 bottles, released for UK, bottled by The Whisky Exchange. Each cask is bottled on its own terms, a snapshot of how a particular wood shaped the Saitama spirit. At 56.5% it drinks well neat, with water settling the oak.