Japan Distills a World-Class Whisky Tradition

Nikka Single Cask Yoichi 10 Years Old (left); Suntory Hibiki 21 Years Old (center); Nikka Taketsuru 21 Years Old (right)

Stone gate entrance to Nikka’s Yoichi distillery. (left); View of the distillery from the second-floor window of the stone gate. (right)

Sugimoto Jun’ichi, the head of the Yoichi distillery.

Pot stills at the Yoichi distillery. (left); A distillery worker shovels coal into a pot still. (right)

The cask warehouse at the Yoichi Distillery.

Taketsuru Masataka and his wife Rita.

Japan’s first whisky, Suntory Shirofuda (left); original bottle of Suntory Kakubin (center); Nikka’s first whisky (right).

Suntory’s Hakushū distillery in Hokuto, Yamanashi prefecture; photograph courtesy of Suntory Ltd.

Ono Takeshi, head of the Hakushū distillery. (left); Suntory Single Malt Hakushū 12 Years Old. (right)

The vat used to create the “wort” (left); the wooden fermenting vat at the Hakushū distillery (right).

Foam on the wort as fermentation progresses.

Pot stills of various shapes at the Hakshū distillery. (left); Cask warehouse at the Hakushū distillery. (right)

Nikka’s chief blender, Sakuma Tadashi (left).