Japanese Whiskey

The founding story runs through two men. Masataka Taketsuru travelled to Scotland to study chemistry and distilling, worked in distilleries there, came home and helped build the first commercial whisky distillery in Japan. Shinjiro Torii backed that distillery and built a drinks business around it. Taketsuru later left to found his own company in Hokkaido, choosing the north because its cold, damp climate reminded him of Scotland. The Scottish template was copied deliberately, right down to the shape of the stills. Climate and later choices about wood took the results somewhere else entirely.

Mizunara is a Japanese oak that coopers find difficult: porous, prone to leaking, and in need of long seasoning before it can be used. Whisky matured in it is often described as picking up sandalwood, incense and coconut notes that are hard to find elsewhere. Casks are scarce and slow, so mizunara frequently appears as a finishing cask rather than the whole maturation. It is not a requirement of the category.

For a long time nothing stopped a bottle labelled Japanese whisky from holding spirit distilled elsewhere and simply blended or bottled in Japan. Trade body standards introduced in recent years set out what the term should mean, covering where the spirit is distilled, how long it matures in Japan, and where it is bottled. These are industry standards rather than statute, so they bind the members who signed up and nobody else. Stock made before they took effect remains on shelves, and some producers now label blends containing imported whisky as world whisky instead. Read the back label if provenance matters to you.

Demand rose much faster than anyone had laid down stock to meet, and whisky cannot be hurried. Several well known age statements were withdrawn once the aged stock behind them ran short.

It is whisky and chilled soda water over ice, built in a tall glass and stirred once. In Japan it is an everyday way to drink whisky alongside food rather than a compromise.

The method was borrowed, but the shape of the industry was not. Scottish distilleries have long traded casks with each other to build their blends. Japanese companies largely did not, so each site had to produce a wide range of spirit styles itself, varying still shapes, yeast strains and cask types in house. That, plus a different climate and mizunara oak, is where the divergence comes from.