Nose : Peach and dried apricot, sweet butterscotch, vanilla cream, citrus zest, synthetic bananas and gooey malt.
Palate : Toffee first and foremost, with notes of barley malt, gingerbread, tropical fruits, honeyed pipe tobacco lveas, black pepper, roasted chestnut and freshly cut hay.
Finish : Medium length with vanilla and dried tropical fruit.
About Chichibu
Chichibu distillery in Saitama, Japan was opened in 2008, and was the country’s first new distillery since Suntory opened Hakushu back in 1973. Chichibu was the brainchild of Ichiro Akuto, grandson of the founder of the legendary Hanyu distillery. The Ichiro’s Malt brand appeared in 2005 and rose to fame through the bottling of the last casks from Hanyu, particularly the sought after ‘Card’ series. The first Chichibu releases appeared under it in 2011.
Chichibu is one of Japan’s smallest whisky distilleries, famous for their craft-scale production. With a small, young team, innovative methods and a following from around the world, Chichibu is seen by many as the future of Japanese whisky.
Chichibu was founded by the living legend Ichiro Akuto, a name made familiar to many by his award-winning Ichiro’s Malt Cards. While Chichibu is quite a young distillery, founded in 2004 and beginning production in 2008, Ichiro’s history with the spirit goes back much further. His family have been involved in Sake production since the 17th century, and his grandfather started whisky production at the Hanyu distillery in the 20th century. During the whisky loch and financial downturns of the 1980s and ‘90s, Hanyu was eventually forced to close, becoming one of Japan’s famous lost distilleries. Their casks, however, were still resting, and Akuto took ownership of these in 2004. These became the base for Ichiro’s Malt Cards, a highly collectable series of 58 bottles representing cards in a deck.
