On our Nippon tour 2019 we visited one of the smaller distilleries in Japan, “Chichibu”. Chichibu may be small in production volume but all the bigger when it comes to quality and tradition. The tradition is held by the founder Ichiro Akuto who started building the distillery in 2004 and it was in operation 2008. Ichiro Akuto is grandson of the founder of the closed distillery Hanyu, which has a history back to the 17th century with Sake making in Chichibu and later whisky. Hanyo was closed in 2000 and later sold. Ichiro bought (with help from a friend) the main part of the casks in the warehouse, around 400 pcs. The casks were important during the start of the new distillery and still are. The casks are among other included in the famous “Card Series”, which, in addition to good attention, has also provided capital for the investment in the new distillery. Chichibu has focus on single malt and not blended like most of the other Japanese whisky distilleries.
Chichibu distillery is beautifully placed in the mountains, about 10 km road from the village Chichibu in the Saitama prefecture. In the mountains around Chichibu, there is plenty of water of the highest quality in the waterways, which is important in the production of premium single malt.
