Yoichi Distillery

余市蒸留所 / Yoichi Jōryū-sho

A visit to the West coast of Scotland is often enough to leave a huge impression on the eyes and minds of anyone.  For Taketsuru Masataka, it was to change his life forever. One of the founding fathers of Japanese whisky, Taketsuru was already deeply entrenched in the art of the spirit’s production. He was instrumental in establishing the Yamazaki Distillery, but something played on his mind- perhaps the views of the North Atlantic Ocean from the Kintyre Peninsula had left a much deeper impression.  In 1934, Taketsuru left Yamazaki to form the Nikka distillery, based in the beautiful coastal, yet mountainous surroundings of Yoichi to the south west of the Hokkaido Island. It was this very location that reminded him of his spiritual home in Campbeltown and one, which years before, he identified as being a perfect place to start a whisky distillery, when he returned from Scotland to Japan. Yoichi is also the birthplace of the Soran folk song- perhaps Taketsuru still had the sound of the Scottish Ceilidh’s ringing in his ears?

In the decades since the distillery’s inception little has compromised its dedication to making stunning whisky. The spirit stills remain heated by direct coal fires- the only distillery in the world to still use this historic procedure. Yoichi’s core bottlings range from a deliciously light and fruity 10 year old, through to the complex and majestic 20 year old, as well as several highly regarded single cask bottlings.