Ichiro Akuto, the founder of Chichibu Distillery
Two of the most important attributes for a great whisky blender are patience and knowledge. So it’s little surprise that Ichiro Akuto – of Hanyu and Chichibu fame – is one of the driving forces of today’s Japanese whisky renaissance.
Akuto represents the 21st generation of his family to produce alcohol. His ancestors started brewing sake around 1625, before moving into whisky production in 1946. However that thread could easily have been severed in the year 2000.
By this time, Akuto had come to assist his father in running Hanyu; but too late. The distillery shut down in 2000 and was demolished four years later. Akuto was left with 400 unwanted casks of whisky and little else.
Taking a gamble
A stroke of marketing genius transformed his fortunes. The launch of the hugely successful Playing Card series of Hanyu releases in 2005 created a franchise that was to become a darling of the auction rooms in the years that followed.
Fast forward to 2008, and Akuto opened the tiny Chichibu Distillery. Surrounded by mountains, about 80km north-west of Tokyo, it was the first new whisky distillery to open in Japan for 35 years.
The Chichibu Distillery in winter
As the demise of Hanyu indicated, Japan’s great love of whisky had dimmed from its peak in the early 1980s to a nadir around 2007. It was a brave – some would say foolish – time to start up a new distillery.
‘What Ichiro did was to visit about 2,000 whisky bars in Japan, all by himself, over a period of about two years,’ explains Yumi Yoshikawa, Chichibu global brand ambassador. ‘He found so many people enjoying whisky even then – and they were not just drinking one whisky, but comparing three or four.’
Attention to detail
That research gave Akuto the confidence that his approach was the right one. He focused on small-scale production, with attention to the finest details of raw materials, distillation and maturation.
Soon Chichibu – and the adjacent releases of Akuto’s innovative, flavour-led blends – earned a cult reputation. Many of those blends were ‘world’ whiskies combining different origins. Their cult status was only reinforced by their scarcity.
Washbacks of mizunara oak at Chichibu Distillery
A second, much larger (by Chichibu standards) distillery opened in 2019. It was capable of producing more than four times the amount of spirit. ‘Sometimes people are worried when they hear we have opened a second distillery,’ says Yoshikawa. ‘“Oh, you are making more volume, but less quality.” But we needed more characters in the warehouse.’
A highly promising cask sample from the second distillery – nothing has yet been commercially released – suggests that it will take the original Chichibu’s scented, fruit-forward distillate and add some structure and heft from the use of direct fire to heat the stills.
Innovation and creativity
The trademark Akuto approach to whisky-making combines a no-fear exploration of new ideas and techniques – think world blends and a wide array of cask types – with a truly artisanal style. That style encompasses local barley and floor malting.
Ichiro – he has something new in his head every year,’ says Yoshikawa. ‘Every whisky has different flavours, but we always want to show the character of the distillate.’
A ‘wide array of cask types’ is used at Chichibu
That ‘something new’ in Akuto’s head currently is a third distillery. The new grain distillery, called Tomakomai, is scheduled to open in Hokkaido in 2025. There’s already talk of a Coffey still, the use of locally grown maize and a production level that will dwarf the Chichibus.
It’s now been two decades since Hanyu was demolished. In that time Japanese whisky has gone from an ailing industry, just beginning to make its mark on the international awards scene, to one of the most sought-after whisky origins on the planet.
Yoshikawa recalls: ‘When Ichiro started, people said:…
Source : https://www.decanter.com.master.public.keystone-prod-eks-euw1.futureplc.engineering/spirits/chichibu-a-cult-japanese-whisky-540534/
