Chichibu Single Cask #3291 5 Years Old 2011 (Ex-Bourbon, Stout)

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 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. 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 ex-bourbon American oak and finished in a stout beer cask. Only 5 years old, it leans on early wood extraction, vanillin and oak lactones to the fore, though Chichibu's fast maturation gives it more weight than the age implies. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut, while the cask adds roasted malt and a cocoa note. The body is medium and the fruit clear, baked apple and citrus peel running into a warm, lightly spiced finish.

This bottling was distilled in 2011, from cask 3291 and bottled in 2016. It is a run of 249 bottles, released for Japan. It is the kind of single cask that built the distillery's reputation among collectors in barely more than a decade. Bottled at 57.4%, it rewards a drop of water to open the fruit.