Whisky - UK (2020-05)

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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