Chichibu is the youngest of the Japanese distilleries. It was opened in 2008 by Ichiro Akuto who previously ran Hanyu distillery until it closed in 2000. Since they could only call their product whisky in 2011 and wanted some return of investment before that, a few varieties of their spirit were release early in 2009.

Nose:
Very heavy and feinty with thick slow smoke drifting out of the glass. Beefy with almost no detectable wood, especially light on the wood for a Japanese whisky. Eventually you get a little bit of sweet fruitiness.

Taste:
Very very sharp, but do you expect at 61.4% and barely any time in the cask? Sambal and peppers with a peppery sweetness on the background. The palate is very hot and therefore almost too hard to let it swim for more than a few seconds.

Finish:
The finish immediately drops the sharpness a few notches and last fairly long for such a young whisky. You get the sweet and sharp peppers again, and after that the spicy sweetness lingers in a very gentle way.

A very decent spirit with quite some punch. I expected to get less flavours and scents from this apart from spirit and cereals. I am really interested on trying this as it just turned three years old. The flavour profile is very appealing if you like drams like Lagavulin and Yoichi. It could do with a few drops of water though, but that might just kill the flavours too. It really needs a few extra years, though.

Chichibu New Born Heavily Peated, 2009, 61.4%, no longer available but used to cost around € 70 for a bottle.