Chichibu Paris Edition 2025

The Chichibu distillery was founded in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto, whose family had distilled at the closed Hanyu plant, and works on a small scale in the Saitama mountains. 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 distillery ferments in washbacks built from Japanese mizunara oak, where native lactobacilli add fruit and a light incense note to the wash.

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. Chichibu's fruit led house character carries throughout, pear and honey balanced by a dry, oaky finish.

This release was drawn from the distillery's own stock and bottled in 2025. It is a run of 2484 bottles, released for Europe. It is the kind of single cask that built the distillery's reputation among collectors in barely more than a decade. Bottled at 50.5%, natural colour and not chill filtered.