Chichibu Malt Dream Cask 10 Years Old 2008

Chichibu sits in a mountain basin in Saitama, northwest of Tokyo, where Ichiro Akuto fired the stills in 2008 under his Venture Whisky company. 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 make is double distilled in copper pot stills built by Forsyths, from mostly unpeated barley, and matured on site in dunnage warehouses.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. At 10 years the accelerated maturation has driven deep oak interaction, ellagitannins framing the fruit with a dry, spiced grip. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut. Underneath the wood, the make keeps its clean, fruity core, green apple and stone fruit with a light floral edge.

This bottling was distilled in 2008, from cask 212 and bottled in 2018. It is a run of 150 bottles, released for Japan. Each cask is bottled on its own terms, a snapshot of how a particular wood shaped the Saitama spirit. At 62.8%, best read neat first, then opened with a little water. It remains one of the most collected names in modern Japanese whisky.