Chichibu Taiwan Edition 2020

Chichibu is a small Saitama distillery started in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto, founder of Venture Whisky and heir to the Hanyu distilling family. 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 and finished in a madeira cask. 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, while the madeira gives dried apricot and a caramelised nuttiness. The body is medium and the fruit clear, baked apple and citrus peel running into a warm, lightly spiced finish.

This release was drawn from the distillery's own stock and bottled in 2020. It is a run of 701 bottles, released for Taiwan. Releases at this scale sell out quickly, which is part of why Chichibu has become one of the most traded distilleries in the world. Bottled at 53.5%, natural colour and not chill filtered.