Chichibu Paris Edition 2024 Ichiro’s Malt (LMDW)

Founded in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto, Chichibu has risen fast from a small mountain distillery to one of the most sought names in Japanese whisky. 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. 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.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak and finished in a red wine cask. With no age statement it rests entirely on the cask, where vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut, the fast Chichibu maturation giving more than the years would suggest. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut, while the wine lends red berry fruit and a light tannic grip. The body is medium and the fruit clear, baked apple and citrus peel running into a warm, lightly spiced finish.

This release was drawn from the distillery's own stock and bottled in 2024. It is a run of 2484 bottles, released for France, bottled by La Maison du Whisky. It is the kind of single cask that built the distillery's reputation among collectors in barely more than a decade. At 50.5%, best read neat first, then opened with a little water.