Issue 167 | Whisky Magazine 17
Japan Exclusive Yasato Distillery
way through the Ibaraki countryside
to the latest pin on the Japanese
whisky map.
We are welcomed at the distillery
by Toshiyuki Kiuchi, who runs the
company together with his brother
Yoichi, and Sam Yoneda, the 31-year-
old head distiller, who is half-
Japanese, half-Scottish. Don’t expect
a Taketsuru-like narrative of Scottish
tradition transplanted to Japan,
though. The Kiuchi brothers have a
radically different vision for their
whisky enterprise.
“We are looking to create a
genuinely new kind of whisky,
not a copy of Scottish whisky,”
Toshiyuki asserts. “Most craft
whisky distilleries in Japan are set
up as copies of Scottish distilleries.
To a certain extent, I see parallels
with the craft beer movement that
took off in Japan 20 years ago. Most
craft brewers then were copying
the German style. We were one of
ββ
brewing after the government
relaxed regulations governing micro-
brewing in 1996, but right from the
start, we set out to create our own
style of beer.” It’s not hard to see why
the Kiuchi brothers would have a
similar vision for their whisky. At the
time of writing, the Hitachino Nest
beer brand with its familiar owl-logo
is available in 45 markets and is the
most widely recognised Japanese
craft beer worldwide. Clearly, they’re
doing something right.
The idea to set up a stand-alone
distillery took root in early 2018.
“We started scouting for locations
about two years ago, and initially
we focused on abandoned schools,”
Toshiyuki relates, “but the buildings
we came across were in very poor
condition and not really suitable
for whisky-making. Then, we found
this building, which was designed
by a famous local architect and was
used as a community centre. It was
a little smaller than I would have
liked, but we worked around that.
The building was 50 years old and
had been damaged by earthquakes,
so we completely renovated it. In
retrospect, it probably would have
been cheaper to tear it down and
build a new structure from the
ground up.”
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