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This is a blended malt whisky made by exchanging raw materials from Shinshu Mars Distillery and Chichibu Distillery. This is the first initiative of its kind in the Japanese whisky industry.

Honbo Shuzo has announced information on the release of the new product at the end of April 2021.

Japanese whisky lovers will be wowed by this product, which is a joint project with Ichirose Malt. The whisky was made possible through an exchange of malt liquor between Mars Whisky and Ichirose Malt. The malt liquor was distilled in April 2015, exchanged, matured at each distillery, and then vatted for commercialization.

The Chichibu distillery, which started operations in 2008, and the Honbo Shuzo Mars Shinshu distillery, which restarted distilling in 2011.

The distillery was started in the hope that the exchange of raw spirits, which is a common practice in Scotland, could be realized in Japan.

The project, launched by two highly motivated distilleries in pursuit of new possibilities for Japanese whisky, began six years ago in April 2015 with the exchange of new pots of raw whisky from both distilleries.

The Chichibu distillery is rich in nature, with the benefit of the Arakawa River and the temperature difference unique to the basin, while the Mars Shinshu distillery is surrounded by a beautiful forest at the foot of Mount Komagatake in the Central Alps.

The raw materials matured in these two different environments are blended in each place and expressed as a new character.

The soft and transparent fruity taste, and the layers of aroma carefully layered little by little, create a depth that can be felt slowly over time.

It is bottled with high alcohol content, non-chill filtered, and natural color to take advantage of its characteristics.

This is a bottle full of the charm and potential of Japanese whisky, which has many possibilities.

The Bottle

We want to explore the further possibilities of Japanese whiskey and create delicious whiskey that transcends the boundaries of distilleries.

With this in mind, in 2015, Mars Shinshu Distillery and Venture Whiskey Chichibu Distillery began exchanging malt whiskeys from each other and maturing them in their respective locations.

This bottle is a blended malt Japanese whiskey made by vatting the malt of two distilleries, “Komagatake” and “Chichibu”, matured at Mars Shinshu Distillery. We hope you will enjoy this special bottle, which was created by refining the individuality of both Komagatake and Chichibu.

This product conforms to the “Standards for Labeling Japanese Whiskey” of the Japan Western Liquor Brewers Association.

Our Take

The release of a new product from the Saburoumaru Distillery x Nagahama Distillery on March 30, 2012, through an exchange of raw spirits, was also just a hot topic within the Japanese whiskey industry.

This time, the Komagatake x Chichibu blended malt was a joint project that had been underway since 2015, six years ago, and it seems to have been a new attempt after many years. While the exchange of malt has been a common practice in Scotland, it is an initiative that defies common sense, something that had never been considered in Japanese whisky before. A new history has been written in the history of Japanese whisky. I am sure that the Japanese whisky industry will become more and more exciting as more and more initiatives like this are made in the future.

At the moment, there are only a limited number of distilleries in Japan that are capable of producing grain-based whisky, but I have high hopes that the day when blended whisky can be produced by exchanging malt and grain-based whisky may not be far off.

(All Images Courtesy of JPWhisky.net)

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