Chichibu Single Cask #11969 9 Years Old 2014 (Red Wine)

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

This is unpeated single malt, matured in a red wine cask. Around 9 years in, the fruit esters and the wood have married, and the accelerated ageing gives a depth a Scottish whisky might reach much later. The wine lends red berry fruit and a light tannic grip. The palate leans on tropical and orchard fruit, mango and apple, with a clean cereal note beneath.

This bottling was distilled in 2014, from cask 11969 and bottled in 2023. It is a run of 279 bottles, released for Germany. From a distillery still in its first generation, bottlings like this show how far Chichibu has come in a short time. At 62.4%, best read neat first, then opened with a little water. It remains one of the most collected names in modern Japanese whisky.