Chichibu Single Cask #6240 6 Years Old 2016 (Ex-Bourbon)

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. The distillery ferments in washbacks built from Japanese mizunara oak, where native lactobacilli add fruit and a light incense note to the wash. The make is double distilled in copper pot stills built by Forsyths, from mostly unpeated barley, and matured on site in dunnage warehouses.

This is unpeated single malt, matured in ex-bourbon American oak. Around 6 years in, the fruit esters and the wood have married, and the accelerated ageing gives a depth a Scottish whisky might reach much later. Ex-bourbon vanillin reads as vanilla and oak lactones as coconut. 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 2016, from cask 6240 and bottled in 2022. It is a run of 203 bottles, released for Australia. It is the kind of single cask that built the distillery's reputation among collectors in barely more than a decade. Bottled at 60.2%, it rewards a drop of water to open the fruit.