The 2019 release of Chichibu’s On The Way progress report expression, the first since the 2015 edition (2013 was the other) and a whksky that is surely coming close to the assumed 10-year-old expression.
Although this had a relatively healthy release number of 11,000 bottles, it is extremely limited into Australia and already fetching well overs on auction sites. It is created from a batch of 52 casks, all matured between five and ten years. They were drawn from across the Chichibu spectrum, with first-fill ex bourbon, second-fill chibidaru, some peated stock and a small amount of mizunara.
A whisky with lots of fruit (that seems to be the way the distillery is going as its stocks get closer to ten years old), with honey and spice on the palate.
Chichibu was established in 2007 and instantly became one of Japan’s most progressive and innovative distillery. The mashtun is stirred by hand, the washbacks are made out of the notoriously difficult mizunara oak and annual capacity is tiny.
Having kick-started the Japanese craft whisky scene initially, in 2019 the team, led by Ichiro Akuto, built a second distillery that is similar but five times the size.