At the World Whisky Awards (WWA), an international competition organized by a British magazine, “Ichiro’s Malt & Grain Japanese Blended Whisky Limited Edition 2021” won the World’s Best (the world’s highest award) in the category for blended whisky with low production (less than 5,000 bottles). It won the World’s Best Award in the category for blended whiskeys with low production (less than 5,000 bottles).This is the fifth year in a row that the company has been named World’s Best.

Venture Whiskey was the only Japanese whiskey to win the World’s Best Award.

The World Whisky Awards has been held annually since 2007, and is a unique competition for whisky only.

The “Limited Edition 2021” was produced and priced at 1 bottle. Limited to 500 bottles The “Limited Edition 2021” has been produced and is priced at 198,000 yen per bottle including tax. The Limited Edition 2021 is now being shipped to restaurants.

Ichiro’s Malt is a whisky released by Venture Whisky in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture. Ichiro’s Malt is so popular and hard to find that it sells out the moment it hits the shelves, but the standard Leaf Series (Quercus Wood Reserve, Winewood Reserve, and Double Distilleries) are extremely popular and captivate whisky fans.

Venture Whiskey was founded in 2004 by Ichiro Akuto as a whiskey sales company, and three years later, in 2008, he established a distillery in Chichibu City.

Mr. Ichirō Akuto’s passion and dedication to whisky making is so strong that he imported pod stills directly from Scotland.

The pod stills are imported directly from Scotland, and the fermentation tanks, called washbacks, are made of Quercus serrata.

The Bottle

It is a blend of malt from the Chichibu and Hanyu distilleries and grain from the Kawasaki distillery, which once existed.

The malt whiskey from the Chichibu distillery, established in 2008, and the malt whiskey from the former Hanyu distillery, the predecessor of the Chichibu distillery, and the grain whiskey from the Kawasaki distillery, which used corn as a raw material about 40 years ago, are used. Bourbon barrels and sherry barrels were used for aging.

The Chichibu distillery, which started production in 2008, ages its whiskey in traditional dunnage-style storage. From among them, the original whisky that shows its power in blending is used as the key malt, and only the unique domestic whisky matured in Chichibu is blended in a well-balanced manner.
The refreshing sourness that blends with the weighty sweetness of brown sugar, and the barrel aroma with the memories of the maturing vault, linger comfortably in the mouth.

This product has been bottled in a non-chill filtered, natural color to allow you to enjoy the character of the original. We hope you will enjoy the complex flavors created through the dialogue with the original brew.

Our Take

This is a very rare whisky, limited to 500 bottles, but it is available at each BAR Shinkai.

We don’t know how long we will be able to continue blending malt from the Hanyu distillery and grain from the Kawasaki distillery.
It is a very precious whisky, but why not make it a candidate for the whisky you want to drink at least once in the future?

As a side note, the wooden box the bottle comes in is made of “Mizunara” (Quercus mongolica) and is carefully finished one by one by craftsmen.
There is a story that when the limited edition was released in 2019, the production of the wooden box was not completed in time and the release of the whisky was delayed by more than a month.

(All Images Courtesy of JPWhisky.net)

For more awesome Japanese Whisky content, go visit: