Chichibu Single Cask #7843 7 Years Old 2017 (Ex-Bourbon)

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 distillery ferments in washbacks built from Japanese mizunara oak, where native lactobacilli add fruit and a light incense note to the wash. 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. Around 7 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. Underneath the wood, the make keeps its clean, fruity core, green apple and stone fruit with a light floral edge.

This bottling was distilled in 2017, from cask 7843 and bottled in 2024. It is a run of 200 bottles, an event release. From a distillery still in its first generation, bottlings like this show how far Chichibu has come in a short time. At 65.5% it drinks well neat, with water settling the oak.