Chichibu On the Way

In the Saitama mountains northwest of Tokyo, Chichibu has made malt whisky since 2008 under Ichiro Akuto and his Venture Whisky company. 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 basin climate swings from humid summers near 35 degrees to winters below freezing, so the casks expand and contract hard and the spirit takes on wood faster than it would in Scotland.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak and finished in an Oloroso sherry cask. 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, while the Oloroso gives dried fruit and a walnut nuttiness. The palate leans on tropical and orchard fruit, mango and apple, with a clean cereal note beneath.

This release was drawn from the distillery's own stock and bottled in 2019. It is a run of 11000 bottles. From a distillery still in its first generation, bottlings like this show how far Chichibu has come in a short time. At 51.5% it drinks well neat, with water settling the oak.